When the Winter Ends
by MargaritaDaemonelix
Summary: They don't deserve to live. / zombie apocalypse AU. warning for major character death.
1. The Ghost Town and its Ghosts (I)

The darkness in the abandoned grocery store is a good sign.

The announcement system turning on with a screech is not.

Out of sheer surprise, Elesis ducks and swings her crowbar upwards, sighing as it comes in contact with nothing. "Ara, you still there?"

"Yeah," comes the whispered reply. "Who the hell still lives here? The entire town is empty!"

The P.A. System screeches again, and they hit the deck. " _Greetings, visitors_ ," says the voice from above. " _We see you have breached our defences. Turn around, leave your food and water at the door, and do not return to this store. Or this town, for that matter. You have five minutes._ "

Elesis scans the store quickly. Despite the fact that it's dark, it's just a small store, most likely home owned considering how small this place is. "Ara, can you smoke this guy out?"

Ara scoffs. "You underestimate me, Ellie dear."

She shuffles into the darkness as the voice turns to the P.A. " _Four minutes. I can hear you talking, y'know. Stop the chit chat and get going before we collapse the store on your lit- HEY!_ "

There's a scream, and then some hideous microphone feedback that makes Elesis nearly drop her crowbar and plug her ears in agony. "Ara's getting better at this," she muses, putting her weapon back into its (makeshift) holster and looking for the source of the sound.

She finds her girlfriend standing over some guy in a back room, foot planted on his chest and assault rifle aimed at his head. "Woah, woah, _woah_!" She yells, prompting Ara to lower her weapon. "Ara, what happened to " _save as many people as we can_ "?"

Ara pouts, taking her foot off the guy's chest. "The " _save as many people as we can_ " doesn't apply to stupid post-apocalypse cashiers who threaten customers."

"Hey!"

Elesis sighs, leans down and offers her hand to the white-haired guy on the floor. He looks a bit traumatized. "Bit of a rough start," she says, grinning. "You said you wanted food?"

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, they've moved their camp for the night into the grocery store, Ciel nearly burning himself while moving the propane stove. "The name's Edward," says the new guy, sipping his bowl of soup gingerly, "but you shitheads can call me Add."

Lu cocks an eyebrow. "Add."

"Yeah." Add scoops another bean out of his bowl and pops it in his mouth. "What's so bad about that?"

"Yeah, Lu, what's so bad about that?" Ain teases, earning a glare.

"Add. As in addition?" Lu ponders. "Or is it some sort of acronym for something? Or-"

"Lu," Ciel says sternly, and that's the end of that.

There's a beep, and then the glass doors shatter as Rose drives the Battering Ram right into the store, stopping just in front of the door. "Your door's not gonna work anymore," she announces as she steps out, "but hey, my car's in the way, so zombies shouldn't walk right in in the middle of the night."

Elesis nods. "We'll keep watch anyways," she says, hoping to assure Add (who is staring at the damage to his store). "Have you been here a long time?"

"I've lived here for most of my life," he confirms. "Survived the First Winter with my mom." His gaze drops. "She didn't make the First Summer. I've been alone here since."

Everyone murmurs in understanding. No one's gone without loss since the outbreak of the virus, some more than others.

"Do you want to come with us?" Elesis suggests. "We're just picking up survivors as we go. You're out of food. You won't survive on your own."

"There's a safe haven in the north that we might head to someday," Ain adds helpfully. "Most of the remaining survivors are flooding towards Elysion. We're also trying to find a cure."

"Then I'll come with you," Add decides, standing up before awkwardly sitting back down. "I do have food, but I'm never gonna eat it."

"Why not?" Ara asks, puzzled. She has the biggest appetite of their entire group, and tends to complain when it's not sated.

Add sighs. "There's a crate of oyster shooters in the back. I thought they were good, so I cracked open a can a few months ago. I was sick for days afterwards."

* * *

Ain runs some tests, and It turns out Add is allergic to seafood.

Lu laughs for a solid ten minutes before patting his back in solidarity. She's allergic to carrots. They bond over their hatred of their allergies, and their shared love of sweets.

Elesis wonders if the others fit into their team as quickly.

* * *

 **A/N:** **in the aftermath of the last batch of third job releases i'd like to say that i am SHOOK, code sariel has met all my expectations and surpassed them and i am a happy cbs main**

 **as for job paths for this fic? imagine it to be a bit of a continuation of the classes from the Infernal Jukebox series, but with third jobs. don't worry, all will become clear soon. since this an AU, their jobs will mostly be cosmetic matters, but some personality traits and skills may carry over.**

 **you'll notice that the chapters of this fic are differently formatted from my usual format, and that is because instead of being in told in strict chapters, _When the Winter Ends_ is told in segments, kind of like on a variety show! there'll be other segments eventually when things get intense later.**

 **also, a final warning: not every chapter will be happy like this one. after all, what's a zombie apocalypse without a few people dying?**

 **~Marg**


	2. In the Before (I)

This is how the world ends:

Elrios was at war with Maple, about ten years ago. Elesis remembers her childhood was peppered with the looming threat of bombs falling, that one of the first things she taught her brother in case of an emergency was to find her so they could hide together.

The government hired a geneticist in secret during the war, and told him to develop a bioweapon that could bring Maple to its knees. The man they hired was Dr. Henir, widely known as the Mad Doctor. With the promise of his engineered virus, the people of Elrios relaxed and celebrated, no longer in fear of their fearsome enemy.

The neighbouring country of Empyrean, however, saw only bad that could come of the bioweapon, and forced the leaders of Elrios and Maple to get along. In an incredibly powerful order, Empress Ezre of Empyrean (then only a fourteen-year old girl) was able to force Elrios and Maple to sign a peace treaty, one that would last hundreds of years.

Immediately after the war ended, Elesis remembers hearing her mother saying in confusion, "what will become of the virus?"

She wishes her mother had survived the outbreak, because _this_ is what became of the virus.

In retaliation for ending the war and cutting funding to his greatest project, Henir began to develop the virus in secret. Instead of something that would become a pandemic in Maple and ruin their people, he created a virus that would turn them into mindless monsters. Into the virus went others - rabies to turn the victims into primal creatures, influenza to keep it hidden until the worst could emerge, Ebola to turn them into grotesque, bloody bodies, Zika to ruin their minds for good. Those bitten or sometimes even scratched turn into bloodthirsty monsters, seeking to kill so they can feed.

The day that is now known as the Initial Outbreak, Henir releases his virus into the world, via a contaminated batch of a popular snack food. As the first cases begin to pop up, all over Elrios, the military begins to under its fatal flaw in not stopping him before he could begin his experiment. Even the Alterasia pandemic of eighty years past wasn't half as bad as this.

In a last ditch attempt to destroy Henir, President Phoru sends the military to northern Feita, where he'd built his lab, and kills him in silence.

What they didn't realize that the lab was the epicentre of the pandemic. The worst of it - the highest concentration of contagions - is locked in that lab. In killing Henir, the military essentially speeds up the outbreak by nearly a year.

Elesis remembers the night after the initial outbreak, she goes to sleep in the Solace military base like on every other day, and the morning afterwards, she wakes up to chaos and her colleagues turning into mindless beasts. Never being one to panic in the face of danger, she grabs what she can and runs for Velder City.

Going to the city is a bad idea, though. Natural gas has been abandoned, and things are on fire and going to hell. She manages to raid a store for food and steals a police cruiser before getting the fuck out of dodge.

(Later, Ara tells her that she'd just gotten out in time - Velder blows up a day later when a natural gas line burst.)

She ditches the car when it runs out of gas in the suburbs, but she keeps moving. She treks from Velder all the way to Sander, which is how she meets Ara. The First Winter after the outbreak is the harshest, after all, and no one quite has enough to eat or drink.

"Surrender your food immediately," Ara says, brandishing her makeshift spear/knife on a stick at Elesis. "And your clothes, for that matter."

Elesis only smiles enigmatically "Only if you surrender your water immediately."

They end up sharing their remaining supplies that night, sleeping wrapped up in the one sleeping bag Ara had salvaged from her family home.

"My brother went out to forage for food," she confides quietly, one night when they're closer than close. "He got infected and turned overnight. Killed most of our family while he was at it. I'm the only one left now."

Elesis pats her arm. "I have a brother too," she says. "I'm going to try and find him."

She knows it's a little late to be searching for Elsword now, since he'd only known that she was in the Solace base during the outbreak. It's her own fault, really, for skipping out of town the moment she could. Instead, she leaves little markers of red ribbons on the eaves of roofs and on old street lights, so he might be able to see them if he passes through.

"Our goal from now on is to keep as many people alive as we can," she declares to Ara, and that is the beginning of their little team.

They pick up Lu and Ciel in a little township outside Lanox City, after accidentally bringing a flood of zombies behind them. There's only so much Elesis can do with a crowbar while running, after all, and Ara's rifle is running out of ammo when a pair of small hands drag them into a house.

"Don't let them see you," Lu hisses, before dropping her glare and exchanging it for a childish grin. "My brother just put on a pot of soup. You guys look _awful_ , come in and have some."

Ciel doesn't talk much, and three years later, he still doesn't talk much. "He's seen some pretty nasty things," Lu explains. "Man, we haven't even had zombies in our town for a while now. It's gonna be fun."

Elesis gets to witness a fourteen year old girl barrel through a crowd of zombies, armed with nothing but a hatchet and a broom, and return victorious, that day. Lu got hit by the pain of the outbreak in a bad time - she's stuck straddling the world of a child and that of an adult - but she knows she's strong and uses that to her advantage.

And while Ciel is silent, he knows all too much about the zombies. They took his family, his beloved younger sister, so when he found Lu in an alleyway, he'd taken her in immediately. He's good at cooking and knows what's safe to eat and what's not, and calculates just how much food each person in their group needs to eat so he can ration it out. "Grew up in a poor family," is all he says to Elesis about it.

She doesn't ask more.

Ain joins them out of the blue one day, poking his head into their temporary shelter and yelling "HELLO?" So loudly that Elesis jumps out of bed.

(He apologizes profusely afterwards, but Elesis still has the bump on her head to prove it.)

Ain comes from the north, from Elysion, and he brings with him medicine to stave off the virus and news of hope. Elesis hadn't heard about the Nirvana in the north, the safe haven for survivors, or the organization ELIA that has been fighting to destroy the virus. "I'm a scout for ELIA," Ain says. "My mother, Doctor Ishmael, she's the founder and leader. She didn't know I'd signed up for search-and-rescue until I was leaving."

"We're sort of doing that ourselves," Elesis replies. "We're just picking up people as we go."

Ain is nice and offers to help with everything, and Elesis is quite relieved to finally have someone with medical experience on their team. The only spat he gets into is with Lu, who has some very strong ideas about the morality of the zombies. While Ain is a paramedic, he was raised in a very religious household, and as such he believes they should be spared and wait until a cure can be made. Lu, on the other hand, thinks it's better to save them the agony of the wait.

They still hold a grudge against each other, and by proxy, Ain doesn't talk to Ciel either. He does his fair share, though, so Elesis tries her best to mediate between the siblings and the paramedic.

Rose only comes to them during the Third Summer, with a modified electric car full of ammo for their empty weapons and even more weapons. "I'll trade you these for food and water," she says, almost begs, and Elesis simply brings her in without a second thought.

She's quiet. No one really talks to her, except maybe Ara, and even then it's more so talking _at_ her. She's also a former military member, a lieutenant from Empyrean stationed in Elrios, and had the sense to steal a solar panel and a better battery for her car before she left. They all load their supplies into the aptly named "Battering Ram" and share their food and water with her, giving her a change of clothes along the way to replace her bloodstained rags.

Elesis sees a web of black roses tattooed across Rose's back as she pulls on her new jacket, and decides to keep that information to herself.

Rose is a hard worker, and always does more than her own share when it's time to work. She digs for hours through ruined grocery stores to find cans and cases of instant noodles, and doesn't even bat an eye when Elesis thanks her in earnest. "I grew up as the second of four sisters," she always replies. "I always had to do more to outshine the others."

And now, there's Add. He doesn't go out and scout with Lu and Ciel, instead preferring to stay at camp and playfully squabble with Ain over stupid things from the old world, like pizza shops and clothing brands. There's no denying his dexterity with their tech, though. He fixes the jam in Ara's rifle within minutes, the one Rose had been struggling over for days. He patches up the Battering Ram with scraps from an old cooking pot, and cleans it with some old cleaning spray they find in the grocery store.

Add is a germaphobe, that's for sure. He sanitizes everything he can sanitize, and forces the others to bathe more often. Elesis has taken two baths in the week since they've recruited Add, which is is two baths more than she took in the past month. They don't have a lot of running water, but Add has a small water purifier in the room he occupied in the grocery store, and the nearby creek seems to clean enough to collect water from.

Elesis doesn't go to the creek. Running water only reminds her of the Bethagara River, electrified from the collapse of the Bethagara Falls Dam. When she closes her eyes, she can still see the floating bodies. Water gathering duty has been given to Add and Ara, the former still grumbling about having to leave camp.

The little abandoned town is a good camp. Zombies hardly come, and the few that do are readily picked off thanks to Ciel and his sniper rifle. Elesis can finally sleep at night, because there are enough people to fill more night shifts now.

Sure, her team is a little dysfunctional, but she wouldn't give them up for anything. They've got a diverse range of skills that proves to be incredibly useful for their survival, and who knows, they might even take Ain up on that offer to travel to the Nirvana in the north someday.

But Elesis has her heart set on waiting for her brother to come find her, to follow the trail she's left for him. It's been nearly four years since the outbreak, and she hasn't seen him since half a year before that.

Their camp is solid, but Elesis knows it won't hold long. Survivors will flock to it in droves, and she knows not all of them are willing to live and let live.

She hopes Elsword will find them soon.

* * *

 **A/N: i had to flip a coin to decide whether to publish this or one of my long-forgotten oneshots**

 **to be fair though, i need to revise and format the oneshot, and i'm not done the next chapter of Aspect yet, so here this is**

 **another segment introduced! _In the Before_ will be from the perspective of each character, telling the story of their lives before the Outbreak.**

 **welp the relatively happier things will have to come to an end eventually**

 **~Marg**


	3. The Ghost Town and its Ghosts (II)

The little town isn't as quiet as they think it is.

Lu hears the low purr of a zombie waiting to pounce when she's scouting the town with Elesis and Rose. The house had seemed abandoned when she walked in. Clearly it's not.

She inhales slowly, reminding her heart that it needs to beat normally, and reaches slowly for the baseball bat on her belt as she turns around.

What she is expecting to see is a slow, sluggish zombie, probably with no teeth and only half an arm left, skin grey and melting sloppily over the clean kitchen floor, or maybe one that's still mostly intact, its yellow eyes lazy and clouded.

What she actually sees is a small calico cat, purring loudly as it rolls across the floor in front of her, looking like it wants to be scratched.

Immediately, all of Lu's aggressive nature melts away as she squats next to the kitten. "Aw, what a cutie patootie," she coos, burying her gloved fingers in its silky fur. "Is there anyone around these parts?"

The kitten meows loudly again, yawning. "I guess not," Lu giggles, gathering the tiny thing in her arms and tucking it into her jacket pocket. "Come along. I'm looking for food."

She finds an expired box of cat food (ew) and a pallet of bottled water (success!) lying in the kitchen. She doesn't even bother opening the fridge - most fridges are home to festering bacteria and fat bugs. "When's the last time you ate?" She murmurs, opening a drawer and finding a bag of dried apricots. The expiry date isn't for two more years, so she sticks it in her pile of things to bring back. "Do you like apricots?"

The cat does, in fact, like apricots. Maybe it's just hungry, but it gnaws at the one apricot she gives it quickly. Lu smiles and pops an apricot in her own mouth, chewing on it happily.

She almost doesn't see the corpse of the old lady still rocking in the chair.

Dead people are everywhere; Lu has seen enough of them for one lifetime. Seeing someone who clearly didn't die from virus-related reasons, but of old age, is much too rare. The old lady is merely a skeleton, her clothes faded and bleached from the sunlight. Her white hair tumbles down her head in snowy curls, but a layer of dust covers her. She looks serene and at peace.

The rocking chair sways back and forth in the light breeze. Lu realizes that one of the windows has a hole through it, that little paw prints in the dust are the only indication of any life in the house.

She sighs. "Rest in peace, granny," she whispers, patting the cat in her pocket. It whimpers softly and paws at the skeleton, but doesn't leave the warmth of the pocket. "Let's go, kitty."

Instead of holding the pallet of bottled water in front of her, Lu carries it on her shoulder, as so to not hurt the cat. "You're not a kitten," she says as she tucks the bag of apricots in her other pocket. "You're probably, like, half my age."

The cat meows. Lu gives it an apricot.

Camp is lively today. Elesis and Rose have returned from their scouting mission with a stack of clothes, among other things, and Ciel is making minestrone with beans. "Good morning, Ciel-Ciel," Lu says brightly as she returns, setting down the water. "I found a bag of dried apricots!"

Ciel smiles at her. "That's good," he says simply before returning to his soup.

"I also found a kitty!" She continues, taking her new friend out of her pocket. The cat looks a little miffed, but seems content to just eat its apricots. "Can we keep it?"

"No," Ciel says. "I'm not making cat food."

Lu pouts. "Aw, but _Cieeeel,_ its owner is dead! There was an old lady in the house I found kitty in. It looks like she died of old age..."

Ciel gives her a long suffering look. "Go ask Elesis," he decides, turning back to the stove.

That's the most he'll speak for today. Ciel isn't one for speaking, and Lu has gotten really good at interpreting him. Normally, when he gets particularly quiet, the others have to ask her to interpret. She usually makes up some bullshit and comforts him later.

"Elesis," she calls, skipping along with the cat nestled back into her pocket, "I found a cat! Can we keep it?"

"No," Ain says tiredly just as Ara calls out an excited "Yes!"

Lu can't help but giggle as Ara shrugs, dropping the hammer she'd been using. "Lemme see, Lulu," she says, striding over to look at the cat. "D'awww, what a cute kitty!" She turns around. "Add, didn't you say you liked cats?"

"That's Dynamo," the new guy says from his perch on the Battering Ram. "Or at least, that's what I call him. He used to visit me in the store often. I gave him oysters."

"Oh, so you gave the cat the food you didn't like?" Elesis says, grinning mischievously. "Kidding, kidding. What'd Ciel say?"

Lu pouts. "He said to ask you..." She makes her eyes bright and teary as she looks up at Elesis. "Can we keep him? Please? Please?"

Elesis puts on a serious face, like she's deep in thought, but her eyes twinkle with mischief. "How much do you want to piss Ciel off?"

* * *

Ciel isn't pleased that Elesis agreed to keep Dynamo, but his hardened glare softens when the cat purrs loudly and kneads his back. It's probably because he smells like food all the time.

The really displeased one is Ain, who doesn't seem to like animals. He keeps saying that the cat might be a sink for the virus, and makes everyone wear gloves when petting Dynamo.

It's stupid, but they keep their gloves on practically 24/7 anyways. It's not safe to go around without complete protection from the virus. New rules are made - Dynamo isn't allowed near Ciel while he's cooking, and he must stay outside when everyone else is eating. The entire food storage gets moved into the back room, and a lock it put on it when no one's inside.

Rose goes quietly to feed Dynamo after everyone else has eaten, and ensures he gets water. Add manages to train him to do his business outside, in the garden of a now-demolished house. Ciel makes him a little bed out of an old laundry basket and some toilet paper.

Lu keeps the bag of dried apricots for herself, and sneaks Dynamo one now and then. It gives him diarrhea sometimes, but that's Add's issue, not hers.

* * *

 **A/N: me: i should finish that chapter of aspect, since i haven't updated it since janu-**

 **me to me: go, make new aus that you'll never finish since you have like 8 reserve chapters for WtWE anyways**

 **also me: get a hold of yourself, girl, you have a physics test tomorrow and a math test and a bio test on thursday**

 **~Marg**


	4. The Ghost Town and its Ghosts (III)

Ara spots the cloud of zombies on the horizon when the sun comes up.

She lets her finger rest on the trigger, just in case they start to run, but for the most part, they look like walkers, trudging along stupidly. A breath of relief escapes her lips; her shoulders relax.

At the rate the zombies are currently going at, they'll reach the town in about two and a half hours, tops. That's two and a half hours to wake up the others and reinforce the store, finish sealing the hole. They've been taking bricks from the collapsed houses to fill in the gaping void left by the glass doors. It's been maybe a week, and they've only just managed to fill it.

Add is good at planning things like these. He put up strips of wood ("two-by-fours," he'd called them) as a scaffold of sorts, cleared the glass and removed the frame, and then with barely another thought, started lining the doorway with bricks.

Their days are packed sunrise to sunset with work. As Ciel works through their inventory and repacks the Battering Ram, Lu goes into each house, day after day, and pulls out clothes, cans of food, packages of bottled water, even weapons at times. Rose filters through the new supplies, making sure they don't have any known contagions and washing the clothes with filtered water.

The others - Ara, Elesis, Add and Ain - work on reinforcing the store. There aren't any windows to fill and the loading bay is secure, thank goodness, but with the hole in the store gone, there's no way for them to get in and out if they can't open the bay door. Add builds a folding ladder out of leftover wood and door hinges, and a more permanent mechanism to get it onto the roof. That way, they can climb up to the roof and get in through the maintenance trapdoor, while still being able to keep zombies off the roof.

It's a good plan, but Ara looks up and realizes that the zombies are much, much closer than she'd anticipated them to be. There's a significantly taller zombie at the front, and two at the back, herding the rest into line. The pack moves swiftly, and illuminated in the red glow of the sunrise, they look like a cloud of mosquitos, out for blood.

Those aren't walkers. Those are _kindergarteners_ , and Ara feels sick to her stomach.

"Wake up, everyone!" She shouts, running over to the trapdoor and forcing it open. "There's a pack of kindergarteners incoming!"

All at once, there's a rush of chaos downstairs. Ara runs to the ladder to pull it up, before returning to the trapdoor to pull Ciel up. "Kindergarteners?" Ciel mutters, grimacing when Ara nods. "Yikes."

The virus hit in the most populated places, and the worst of its victims are the children. Entire schools were trapped in festering cesspools of the virus, within walls of asbestos and lime. Public elementary schools were the source of some of the worst massacres, with parents rushing to pick up their children only to be killed by turning teachers.

Ara feels the worst of the pandemic press down on her when she sees the kindergarteners. They're not a class of zombie on their own, per se, but the general term used for the _children._ It hurts to see the youngest victims of the virus and it hurts even more to have to kill them, but Ara knows it's her or them.

 _Someday,_ she tells herself, _someday I'll have my own children, and I'll raise the next generation._

Her heart aches all the more, but she says nothing as she climbs down through the trapdoor, running for the Battering Ram. "Jacket," she gasps, throwing her gloves into a cardboard box nearby before diving into the back trunk and grabbing her black coat. Guilt builds up in her chest as she climbs back up to the roof.

They're running out of time. Add, Elesis and Ain have already jumped down to finish covering the front of the new brick wall with plaster. "This isn't going to be enough," Add mutters, dipping his makeshift scraper (a broken kitchen knife) into the plaster and splattering it against the wall. "It's not going to dry in time. We're going to be crushed by the zombies."

"We can try," Elesis amends. "Ara, how long until they arrive?"

Ara looks up. The leader of the kindergartener pack, known as the teacher, is almost on the outskirts of town. "Barely two minutes!"

"Then we need to stall them!" Lu snaps, a sniper rifle in her hands. "Ciel, c'mon!"

Seeing serious Lu is a rare occurrence, but certainly terrifying. Ara watches as Lu hops from the roof of the grocery store to the next building over, her powerful leg muscles boosting her over the gap with Ciel not far behind her.

Rose emerges from the trapdoor with two jugs of bleach, and a box of candles in her pocket. "Here!" She yells, throwing the candles to the group below. "Plaster dries faster with heat!"

As the team with the plaster begins to dry it off with lighters and candles, Rose hands Ara a brightly-coloured gun. "What's this for?" She asks, realizing that the object in her hands is actually a water gun, a children's toy. _Ironic, really._

"Fill it with bleach," Rose instructs, "and pump up the pressure. We have more bleach than I know what to do with, and we really need to start saving rounds of ammo."

It takes a few tries and a few spills to get the bleach in. Ara is certain that the gun will fall apart in her hands, but Rose looks at the result and nods in approval.

Lu comes bounding back, moments later, screaming something about incoming zombies, and the team below throws their candles aside, packs up their supplies and runs for the ladder.

The teacher of the pack is in sight. She looks like she might have been a pretty young woman in life, with dark hair and round glasses, but bite marks cover her grey skin, mottling it in yellow and green. Ara pumps the gun and presses on the trigger, pegging her in the forehead with pure bleach.

For a terrifying moment, the zombie doesn't move. Then a hole appears in her forehead, clear to the back of her head. The hole grows as her body melts, and soon her entire body has slumped to the ground, turning into a puddle of zombie juice.

Then, real hell breaks out.

The issue with the kindergarteners is that without a teacher, they go into a state of complete chaos, as they would in life. Some groups have a sub-teacher, especially with larger groups. This pack has two sub-teachers (called assistants, typically) that rush to the front and take the teacher's place.

Or at least, they try. The kindergarteners turn on the assistants, crushing them and giving Elesis, Ain and Add just enough time to climb back onto the roof. "You're doing great, honey," Elesis murmurs as she comes to stand near Ara. There's a bit of plaster smudged across her cheek, but Ara is wearing gloves, she can't wipe it off now.

The kindergarteners disperse from where the assistants were once standing, leaving scraps of fabric and dirty green stains on the ground. They swarm the building, trying to climb up but not being tall enough.

This is certainly the most eventful morning Ara's had in a while, but not the most stressful. "Do we kill them?" She asks, shooting a stream of bleach at a kindergartener that's getting dangerously close. "Like, all of them?"

"I could smack them into submission," Lu suggests, putting her rifle down and reaching for her baseball bat. "Saves us a little ammo."

"Let's not," Elesis says. "Do we have flour? Or starch?"

Ara grins. "I knew you were a pyromaniac at heart," she quips, hopping down back through the trapdoor. There's flour in the back room, as far as she knows, but Dynamo is still yowling in the store, which means it's probably locked.

"Guys, I need the key!" She yells to the roof above. "The key to the back room!"

There's a shout of "Shit!" And then a jangle as the key hits the ground. Ara gropes for it blindly in the darkness, eventually hitting it with her hand and snatching it up.

The lock clatters to the ground as she wrestles with the key, and then she's into the storage room, grabbing the few bags of "Ruben's Finest" all-purpose flour. "Take them!" She yells, passing the flour up into Elesis and Ciel's waiting hands. Her job is done, but there's still more to do.

The climb back up to the roof is a little more difficult, but then Lu grabs her hand and pulls her up. "Just in time," she says, eyes alight with mischief and malice. "Time to light things up."

Add throws the burning candle into the river of zombies below, and they all hit the deck as the cloud of flour ignites.

* * *

Ara now understands why Elesis doesn't go the river, why the memories hold her back. She'll never use candles ever again, not after the kindergarteners go up in flames.

They found nearly ninety little bodies in the aftermath of the flour bomb. _Ninety_ children in that group, _children_ that were victims of the virus. Ara feels sick just thinking about the children she virtually _murdered_ in cold blood, and it haunts her.

The bleach from the water gun leaves a pale stain in the middle of her otherwise dark gloves. A small bleach burn stings underneath, and the pained expression on Rose's face tells her a story of regret and apology.

Elesis treats both their burns herself, since Ain and Ciel are busy patching up themselves and Add and Lu. She washes out their gloves and wraps their hands up with bandages and lavender-aloe salve. Ara feels her skin tingle when Elesis presses her lips to the burn.

Thankfully, no one was hurt by the flour bomb, but it leaves them all wary of their surroundings. Lu has a small scrape on her knee from tumbling when she landed back on the roof, and Ain's hands are a little sore from his harsh fall when they hit the deck after the flour cloud ignited.

Ara finally gets a chance to wipe the smudged plaster off Elesis's cheek. She kisses it afterwards.

One of the unexpected good things that came out of the flour bomb is that it sealed the plaster covering the brick wall. They seal it again with a second layer, after they've recovered, and leave it to dry.

After the kindergartener incident, Ciel takes over night watch for a few days. It's clear Ara is shaken, after all, even if she herself can't quite tell. She spends most of her time wandering aimlessly around town and just sitting beside Elesis as she works.

"You should drink some water," Elesis suggests as Ara comes to sit beside her while she's cleaning her crowbar. "Your lips are parched."

"I don't want to do anything," is all Ara says, and Elesis doesn't respond.

Ara goes back to her regular day-to-day schedule after that, but it's clear from there on out that her smiles are a lot more forced.

* * *

 **A/N: rest in peace Marg's 2 month long upload streak, brutally murdered by one (1) vacation and the inability to upload on mobile**

 **i said i was gonna finish the next chapter of Aspect on the four hour car trip but all i did was sleep and play pmd explorers of sky**

 **in terms of zombie types, i'm still compiling the different parts of this AU but i figured that the virus would spread the most quickly in highly populated areas, and what other highly populated area is there aside from a school? maybe high schoolers (ie. Lu) would have escaped in time, but elementary schools would have turned almost instantly**

 **it's not even 9pm yet and i'm already exhausted**

 **~Marg**


	5. The Ghost Town and its Ghosts (IV)

What if Grace Grenore hadn't died in the First Summer?

Add thinks about his mother every day, thought about her every day after her death. Sometimes it's just as simple as a quiet thought in the evening, before he goes to sleep. Other times, someone in the group does something that reminds him all too much of her, and the memory haunts him.

So what if Grace Grenore hadn't died in the First Summer? Would she have survived the Second, and the Third? Their little township outside Elder has always been quiet and cold, so she'd naturally been resilient to the Winters. When summer came, her immune system fell victim to allergies, and then the virus came.

Add refuses to believe that she turned, despite the cold, grey skin that lined her thin frame when she passed on. He'd been trying for months to take the virus in his own veins, to make something to save her, but with no equipment and very little experience, he could barely even extract blood from his own body.

Maybe she would have survived if they'd lived in a less cold town. Maybe if they'd moved away after she got her divorce papers, ran away instead of staying in their town and waiting for the authorities to drag Father away. Maybe if Father hadn't worked with Dr. Henir. Maybe if Father hadn't been such a terrible person.

It's hard to shake away the thoughts of Asker once they appear, so Add sits down and puts his wrenches away. The car tires can wait for a little longer.

Asker Grenore was not a good man. Add is content knowing that he was among the bodies found in Henir's lab when the military stormed it, three years ago. Parts of his father haunt his nightmares, and sometimes even his waking hours.

The worst of the nightmares is when Asker is the one holding the blade to Grace's throat, reminding him to _return to the lab tomorrow, Edward, or your mother gets it._ His ugly lips form an ugly laugh, and then out of his ugly mouth comes the virus that ended the world.

When it gets too bad, Add visits his mother's grave.

It was dug hastily, and under great duress, but Grace Grenore lies in the badly-made wooden coffin below the surface, in peace. A little patch of forget-me-nots has bloomed on top of her grave, where a tombstone carved out of a random rock stands.

 _GRACE GENORE_

 _LOVED AND WAS LOVED_

Really, Add's not one for sappy, dramatic sayings, but he thinks his mother would have liked it.

"Hey, Mom," he says, squatting next to the grave quietly. The forget-me-nots are fading due to the winter cold. "Sorry I haven't visited often. I've been pretty busy."

He smiles to himself as the wind whistles around him. "Yeah, I found new friends," he says. "They're all really quite nice. I'm sure you'd love them if you were here.

"They came in a little group. Their leader is Elesis. She's ex-military, and she has a younger brother who she's waiting for. I think... I think I can trust her. She knows what she's doing, but she teases a lot. When we need to be serious, though, she gets really serious.

"The other ex-military girl on our team is Rose. She's from Empyrean, and apparently she has three sisters. No one really talks to her, but she kind of knows what's happening. She's weird, I guess, but it's not my place to question her.

"There's a pair of siblings that aren't actually siblings in the group. Their names are Lu and Ciel. Lu is seventeen but acts like she's either eight or she's twenty-five. Ciel doesn't really talk much, so I don't really talk to him. He makes good food, though." He smiles. "Oh yeah, and apparently I'm allergic to seafood. That explains so much now.

"The medic guy on the team is named Ain. He was a former paramedic and now he's working for the group in the far north that's trying to save everyone. I kinda like his sense of humour, but the guy can be an asshole sometimes."

The wind blows his hair around, and he laughs. "I'm trying to be a better person," he insists, and he is. "These people make me happy to be around, Mom."

There's a crinkle behind him, too loud to be the wind. Add whirls around to find Ara standing behind one of the pillars that once supported the library. Her eyes are shining, and her hand is over her mouth.

He smiles. "And this is Ara," he says to his mother, beckoning Ara over. "She's nice and she talks to me about cats." He turns to Ara. "You wanna talk to my mom?"

She nods, looking awestruck. "Uh, hello, Mrs. Grenore," she begins, amending it with a quiet "Miss" when Add mouths it at her. "Your son is really quite talented. I hope you're watching him now, because I think you'd be very proud of him."

They squat at the side of the grave in silence for a while as Ara reads the bad chisel work on the tombstone. "I'm sure you'd love Ara, Mom," Add says at last. "There's a lot of warmth in her that reminds me of the Before."

He can't see it, but there are tears sparkling in Ara's eyes.

* * *

 **A/N: Marg, one week ago: I'm gonna finish the next chapter of Aspect and upload it! I'm gonna be productive and get to work on my extended essay! I'm-**

 **Marg, now: _sighs as she prepares to upload another chapter of WtWE_**

 **in all seriousness though I'm doing my best to focus on at least getting another chapter of Aspect out, since I haven't finish planning it in its entirety yet. If all else fails and I run out of reserve chapters for WtWE (which shouldn't happen, I have enough to last me a month and a half), I still have another multi-chapter fic to publish.**

 **Hopefully I can put some sense of a schedule in place for 2018!**

 **~Marg**


	6. In the Before (II)

Rose is barely fifteen when she runs away from home.

The war is just ending, and the soldiers are starting to come home from peacekeeping. Empyrean had just forced Elrios and Maple to sign the peace treaty, bringing news of lasting balance between the two nations. Every day, Rose excitedly grabs the tablet computer to fight her sisters for the privilege of video calling their father.  
Those are happy days. Rose remembers when she is not Rose but Anna, Anna Testarossa, the second of four sisters. Together, they are unstoppable. Even with slightly differing dreams, they support each other's ambitions to the last.

The soldier comes to give his condolences in early May. Papa had been killed in a small scale attack on his military base. The explosion left no survivors, and Papa is only one of many victims. Vera and Cora immediately start to cry, and Edna has to move to support Maman, who has collapsed.

Anna stops believing in peace that day, and as the peace dies, so does Anna. With Papa gone, she becomes an empty shell.

Running away is simple. Enlisting in the army afterwards is not. They process millions of papers before telling her she is too young to enlist, too young to become what Papa was, but she is permitted to watch and learn, and help with odd jobs here and there in exchange for a roof over her head and food on her plate.

By the time she turns eighteen, the shell once known as Anna has already learned all there is to learn about what Papa had done in life. She enlists and immediately gains the role of Rose, the best soldier in her rank. When she isn't training, she learns all she can about the routes she can go down, the things she can do with her training.

She meets her sisters once in the cafeteria, during their training days. Like her, they'd chosen to go into military training, but unlike her, they aren't here to avenge Papa - only to continue his legacy. Edna's hair has grown unruly and heavy weapons hang at her side. Cora has donned the baggy jumpsuit of an engineer. Vera's pristine uniform is decorated with the proud badge of the Empress's elite guard.

Rose doesn't talk to her sisters, and if they recognize her, they don't show it. Her hair is short and her hat hangs over her face, shielding her from her sisters that have now become her enemies.

Four years of military school leaves her as a weapons specialist, but also an outcast within her department. After graduating, she gets her hair permed, pretends she's not a redhead like Maman and instead blonde like Papa. She gets a single black rose tattooed onto her back, as a harsh reminder of her time as a shell.  
Anna is gone, and with every time new black rose on her back, Rose loses a bit more of her past self.

She does talk to Edna once, because Edna has also decided to specialize in weaponry. Where Rose works with rifles and pistols and knives, though, Edna fixes artillery and large cannons. Their awkward conversation comes over lunch one day, when there's no seats left in the cafeteria except for the lonely table where Rose sits.

"You know, you could have told us," Edna says, pushing the carrots away from the string beans on her plate. "Maman nearly died in that first month you left, and Vera broke up with her girlfriend out of sheer stress.

"So what?" Rose snorts, scooping the carrots out of her sister's plate and exchanging them for her own string beans. "You guys are strong. You would have learned to survive without me, either way."

Edna is quiet for a while as they both eat their vegetables in silence. "Cora's going to be graduating this year," she says. "She's built great things. And Vera's the captain of the Empress's guard, as much as she hates to admit it."

Rose smiles weakly. "I'm proud of them both." She slips the last bite of ham into her mouth, gets up and pats Edna's back. "And I'm proud of you too, Edna."  
She slips away into the cafeteria, not looking back.

Her tattoo artist is confused when she requests that he cover the entirety of her back with black roses and pepper it with thorns, but he does it anyways, and Rose feels proud when she puts on the one backless dress she owns and looks at the masterpiece on her back.

Edna doesn't come back. She has new friends, and she has their sisters, after all. Soon, Rose hears that she's been transferred to another base to build some sort of laser cannon. She's happy for Edna, but it's only a fleeting thought in a sea of mindless work.

Rose spends another empty year training to become a weapons specialist, and then she is no longer Rose, the best student, but Rose the lieutenant. She is transferred to Elrios, and picks up the language quickly over the two years she's stationed in the Rosso Military Base in Sander.

Thus, when the outbreak begins, Rose starts to feel the gears in her life turn again.

There were rumours of a bioweapon being developed in Elrios, ten years ago, during the war. Rose had only barely entertained the thought, but with knowledge of where supplies were held in the base, she knows exactly how to escape, how to dodge the wave of the virus. She takes all she thinks she'll need - which really isn't a new feeling - and runs, drives far away.

The outbreak to many is the end, but to Rose it is a new beginning. To her, it is her awakening from a thousand years of sleep. Her mind clears and her well-honed instincts become even sharper. She doesn't fear the zombies, because she was never trained to become a peacekeeper.

This is why Papa didn't survive, she thinks. You can't barter for peace with madmen, just like you can't barter for peace with zombies.

And yet she thinks of not Papa, but her sisters and their Maman. What of them? Will they survive?

Rose spends her days away from cities, living on what little food and water she has until she runs out of food, and then water. Her clothes are tattered, she's dehydrated and probably dying, and instead of supplies she can use, right now she has an electric car full of guns and ammo.

The tears she should have cried when Papa died come flooding out. She isn't in the best position to cry, because her body cannot spare the water, so her tears are dry but it rains in her heart. The hopelessness swallows her whole.

And yet Rose is determined to see a future, to live on forwards. She lets her dry tears fade and she keeps going, even without food or water. She catches rainwater and drinks it to sustain herself. She eats the last morsels of food she has, and pushes on forwards.

She isn't afraid of the virus, or of the zombies. There's a whole world at her fingertips, and she can't let it get to her.

Three days after she runs out of food, she finds a group of people camping on the outskirts of Altera City. They're an odd bunch, with crowbars and empty rifles and vibrantly coloured hair.

"Please, I need food and water," she says quietly. "I'll trade you these for food and water."

They give her more than that. They give her enough food to satisfy the growling hunger in her stomach, and enough water to quench her parched lips, and the black-haired girl with the bright smile gives her new clothes, dappled in black and red.

Shedding her old rags is like shedding a layer of skin. She looks at herself in the mirror, and sees how scraggly she is. She hasn't been this skinny and malnourished since before military school.

The red-haired girl is clearly ex-military, just like she is. Her vivid red hair is much more vibrant than Rose's hair before she got her perm. Even though there is dignity and cold truth in her words to the team, Elesis brings life to the group, and. Rose sees in her a leader and a friend.

"What are you looking for?" She asks Elesis, one day after dinner. "Salvation? Redemption?"

Elesis smiles. "My brother," she says, stretching her arms lazily over her head. "I'd just graduated from military school when the outbreak hit. We were supposed to meet up afterwards, but I guess..." She shrugs. "It never really happened, because we were so caught up trying to survive."

"I was in the Rosso base," Rose says, like she's said so many times in her thoughts. "I was a lieutenant at the time." She pauses, staring into her lap. "I ran away from home when I was fifteen to join the army."

"Why?" Elesis asks, baffled. "Was your family abusive or something?"

"Far from it. I had two loving parents and three kind sisters." She laughs out loud. "Now I have no one. Papa's death was the reason why I ran away, and there's no telling whether Maman and my sisters are alive in Empyrean or not."

They're both quiet for a while. "You have us," Elesis finally says. "We'll be your family now. Even if we're a bit dysfunctional."

Rose likes her new family, even if she doesn't really talk to them. It's nice knowing they have people they love who they want to reunite with, and that they support her goal just as much as she supports theirs.

She misses her sisters, and Maman and Papa, but no amount of crying will bring them to her. All she can do now is look forwards to finding them.

She hopes they'll like her new family as much as she does.

* * *

 **A/N: i really should get back to writing Aspect but instead I started a new fic and anyways I am just constantly filled with Regret  
**

 **I keep forgetting to work on my already existing fics and I keep starting new ones**

 **watch me scramble to write at midnight on december 31st again**

 **~Marg**


	7. The Ghost Town and its Ghosts (V)

Ciel likes the serenity of the town.

Even though the daytime is full of lively chatter (mostly due to Ara and Lu), the nighttime is quiet and Ciel likes it more. He takes the night shift to ruminate over the silence, typically alone.

Ara sometimes gets up at two, thinking she has to take over the night shift like she did when it was just her and Elesis. Ciel always just tells her to go back to sleep, so she'll have enough strength to cover his back when he's asleep during the day. Lu sometimes comes to sit with him on the roof, softly singing old pop songs from when she did modern dance in the Before.

Tonight, his guest is, for some reason, Ain. Ciel has never really liked the paramedic's haughty attitude, but unlike Lu, he doesn't mind his presence. "Can't sleep?" He asks, grabbing his hand and pulling him up.

Ain shrugs as he climbs onto the roof, shaking his hand out. "Not in particular."

Ciel hums and continues to wander across the roof, making his nightly patrol. Ain just leans against the ledge, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply.

Occasionally, now and then, a zombie ambles through the streets, seeking the source of the smell of human flesh. A walker is passing through the street below - it only has one arm and its foot is breaking off, but it' still moving. Ciel raises his sniper rifle over the ledge of the roof, squints through the crosshairs, and pulls his trigger.

The zombie's head explodes in a bloody flower, not in human red but a sickly green. Ciel pulls his medical mask over his nose to block out the wave of virus released by the death, and silently urges Ain to do the same with his coat hood.

"Does this make you feel good about yourself?" Ain asks, long after the virus has passed from their area. "Sniping zombies from the roof of an abandoned grocery store?"

Ciel shrugs. "If it keeps Lu safe, I'll do anything," he says.

"She isn't really your biological sister, is she," Ain muses, smiling at Ciel's surprise at his observation. "The two of you may have similar hair and eye colours, but you have very different facial structures and behaviours." He coughs. "The two of you have a sort of irregular pattern of interactions too. Doesn't seem befitting of siblings that would otherwise have been through thick and thin together for seventeen years."

The lingering silence that follows is enough of an answer. "My actual sister... Terre," Ciel says quietly. "Died in the initial outbreak. Along with the rest of my family. I lived with a neighbour until he died, and then I found Lu."

"Do you know where she's from?" Ain asks. "Is she from your hometown?"

"No." Ciel raises his sniper rifle again, pointing it into the distance only to find a rippling leaf in the wind. "She's from abroad. Maple, I think."

"Private school kid, probably," Ain mutters. "Probably one of the popular girls who did cheerleading and bullied other kids."

Ciel shakes his head. "On the contrary. She did do cheerleading, but she was also class president," he explains. "Before, Lu was very kind. The zombies changed her a lot."

"She's a prick now," Ain says, sniffling. "What happened along the way?"

"You'd be like that if you were forced to grow up that quickly, too," Ciel says. "She hadn't even started high school yet at the time." He sighs. "I'm sorry on her behalf. She doesn't see how hurtful her words can be sometimes. We're still working on it."

Ain studies him in silence, blinking quietly. "I'm sorry too," he says. "It wasn't fair of me to isolate the two of you."

He pats Ciel on the back and heads back down into the store, trying to muffle a soft yawn as he disappear again.

Ciel sighs, and takes aim again. It turns out the rustling leaf from before was indeed a leaf, but that leaf was stirred up by a zombie.

 _I can't lose my sister again_ , he thinks, and shoots.

* * *

 **A/N: WOW IT'S MONDAY**

 **I lost track of time because a) it's a holiday so I thought it was sunday and b) I spent my entire afternoon being productive and doing math, I mean can you believe it I have 9 pages of math work from today alone**

 **i don't think Aspect is gonna be updated anytime soon, unfortunately, because Black Swan is currently my priority, but hey who knows, I might have a sudden Blink craze and finish Aspect all in one sitting**

 **anyways i hate trig with a burning passion**

 **~Marg**


	8. The Ghost Town and its Ghosts (VI)

The virus spreads slowly, so Ain must move quickly to counter it.

While a true cure has not been created for the pandemic, several medicines and vaccines have been shown to keep it at bay. Ain carries them in his bag - the blue influenza vaccine, the red ebolavirus fever medication, the golden rabies cure. He tests each of the team members to make sure they haven't contracted the virus, and re-administers the medications as necessary.

Ain's worst nightmare is to wake up one morning and find himself numb and unfeeling. Numbness in the fingers and toes is one of the first signs of the virus beginning to take over. Then it's the blistering lips and breaking skin. Then the weakening bones, and the greying skin, and the eyes turning lifeless and undead.

That was among the first things he learned when he signed up as a search-and-rescue scout for ELIA. Those most at risk include children and the elderly, as well as those who have previously never been vaccinated.

Like Add. The results of his blood test are all over the place. He's protected against things like measles and TB and polio and even the Alterasia pandemic, but not influenza. The virus concentration in his bloodstream skyrockets to 100% for a second before dropping to 0%, which Ain has never even seen before.

"You've never been vaccinated," he says, raising his eyebrows, "not by me or anyone else, and yet you don't have a drop of virus in your bloodstream."

Add laughs. "Yeah. I'm good at surviving."

"You've lived in a town teeming with virus for the majority of your life," Ain argues. "There is no way you're completely immune to the virus." He pauses for a moment. "How'd your mother pass on?"

The newcomer's face falls. "She turned," he says simply. "Took her own life afterwards to protect me."

Ain sighs. "I'm pretty sure you should have died by now," he says, loading one of his clean syringes with influenza vaccine, "but I guess you're just one of the resilient ones."

As he moves to inject it into his arm, Add flinches and shifts away. "Don't."

"What do you mean, don't?" Ain demands. "If you get infected, this could save your life!"

"I get allergic reactions to most vaccines, okay?" Add snaps. He rolls down his sleeve. "My father injected me with some shit when I was a kid, and now I have reactions to everything but I'm immune to the virus. Happy?"

He gets up, rolling his shoulder. "I've lived with it for my entire life so far," he says, a little quieter this time. "I'll live."

Ain just watches wordlessly as he leaves.

* * *

"There's no way that's normal," he confides quietly to Ciel that night, on the roof. Ciel seems to have a little knowledge of medicine, after all. "A natural immunity to the virus has never even been heard of."

"What did his dad inject him with?" Ciel asks. " _Some shit_ could be anything."

Ain bites the inside of his cheek, despite trying his best to ditch the bad habit. "Whatever it is, it's probably not pretty. Do you think it's connected to his seafood allergy as well?"

Ciel nods. "Anything could be suspect at this point," he says. "Mostly his dad."

"Who is he, though?" Ain asks. "And who in their right mind would just randomly inject something potentially dangerous into their child?"

Only the night wind can answer him, but Ain doesn't understand.

* * *

 **A/N: i thought i'd lost the majority of my reserve chapters but thankfully there's a version on my phone, we're still in the clear guys _there is still hope_**

 **~Marg**


	9. All That is Gold (I)

Ciel wakes them up much too early, one groggy morning. "There's a group coming," he says, shaking Elesis's shoulder. "Too fast to be zombies."

"Survivors?" She asks, sitting bolt upright in her sleeping bag. "Shit, man. We haven't picked up any new survivors in a month."

In her mind, though, Add has been part of their group forever. He's fallen into a strange yet familiar cycle of teasing Lu about her height, fetching water from the creek with Ara and talking about weapons with Rose for hours on end. Nothing really changed when he joined them, so the prospect of new survivors - new allies - could really change the way the group works.

"Ara," she says, all sing-song, "time to wake up."

Ara just groans and curls up further into her sleeping bag. "Only if there's breakfast ready."

There isn't, but Elesis manages to drag Ara out of bed anyways with a few well-placed kisses on her more ticklish spots. They don their coats and boots, say good morning to Dynamo, and climb to the roof.

The others are already there, albeit Add looks like he's still half-asleep. "How far away are they?" Elesis asks, taking the binoculars that Rose hands her. "Oh shit, they're close."

And indeed they are. The peculiar group of survivors is smaller than theirs, only six people strong, but they're armed to the tooth and are well-outfitted. The tallest person has only one arm, but an aluminum baseball bat hangs at his side. There's a solemn-looking girl with a black face mask holding her hair back, and a tall woman wielding a crossbow.

Elesis squints at the woman again. Her green hair is no longer allowed to hang around her shoulders, but is braided into a thin snake that dangles from her hood. Her stern green gaze, however, remains the same as it was in the Before.

Her binoculars come to rest on the man at the head of the group. God, his hair is hideous, but then again, so is hers. A crimson fire burns in his lively, but tired eyes. She wonders if he'll still recognize her.

Elesis grins as she sets down the binoculars. "Send up a signal flare," she commands. "Or at least let them know we're here."

"What's going on?" Lu pipes up. "Who's in that group that makes it so important for us to bring them in?"

"That's my brother's group," Elesis says with pride.

 _She found him._

* * *

They don't have an actual signal flare, so instead Rose duct tapes a flashlight to the wrong end of a broom and waves it in the air. "I kind of want to meet your brother," she admits when Elesis comes to stand next to her. "He seems like a cool guy."

Elesis watches them come through the binoculars. Rena is the first one to see the signal flare and points it out to Elsword, who squints before screaming and waving excitedly. Elesis waves back, jumping up and down so he'll see her.

The other group picks up their speed after that. The serious girl zips ahead of the others quickly, and Elesis hops down from the roof to intercept her.

"Are you Elsword's sister?" The girl asks breathlessly as Elesis meets her. "We have been seeking you and your team for several months."

Elesis doesn't miss the shotgun holstered at her side, loaded and ready to be fired.

Soon, the others begin to catch up. First comes a young man carrying three bags, probably sent ahead by the others to deliver them. "Hey," he says, eyes bright. "I'm Chung. This is Eve."

"I'll assume you're Elsword's friends, then," Elesis says amusedly. "Has he been eating his vegetables?"

"No," they deadpan in unison. Elesis just laughs.

Ara comes out from the grocery store just as Rena leaps halfway across the plaza and pulls Elesis into a firm hug. "My lord, do you know how concerned we were?" She demands, her arms shaking. "Up until last year, we thought you'd died in the outbreak!"

"That's nice, but I can't breathe," Elesis manages, to which Rena releases her. "Thanks, Rena." She turns to find Ara standing there. "Ara, this is my childhood friend, Rena. Rena, this is my girlfriend, Ara."

Rena smiles. "Oh, little Elesis is all grown up," she coos, turning to Ara. "Y'know, when she was eight, Elesis had a crush on me and beat up one of the neighbourhood boys over it."

"D'aww, I can totally imagine that," Ara gushes, pretending to ignore the growing red on Elesis's face. "Itty bitty Ellie, with an itty bitty crush. You were like that two years ago, before we made it official."

"Guys, I love the bonding over embarrassing stories of me, but don't you guys have other things to do as well?" Elesis interrupts, face red.

"ELSA!"

She whips around just in time to intercept a screaming red boy, and suddenly Elesis is reminded of times from years ago. "Elsword," she exclaims, "oh my god."

"Do you know," Elsword says, voice trembling, "how much Mom and Dad suffered? They thought you were dead, and for the longest time, so did I."

"Are they still alive?" Elesis asks, fearing the worst. "I tried to call home after the outbreak, and no one picked up."

"That's because we packed everything up and ran," he says. "Someone from ELIA came, and I sent them off with her." His voice falters, but he picks himself up. "I'm glad you're alive."

"Me too," Elesis says, and she means it.

* * *

 **A/N: now we're getting into the fun stuff**

 **this marks the end of _The Ghost Town and its Ghosts_ segment, since certain dynamics will be shaken a bit.**

 **i'll try to throw some longer chapters in after this one. there'll definitely be at least one _In the Before_ in this arc, but after that, things are going to be hazy.**

 **then again, it wouldn't be my writing if i weren't purposely trying to keep everyone their feet, would it?**

 **~Marg**


	10. All That is Gold (II)

The people that Elsword has brought with him are strange, strange people.

He and Rena take turns to give an introduction of each person. Elesis watches and learns intently, trying not to seem cold and smiling when she can. It's kind of hard, though, because this group seems much more battle-hardened than hers.

Chung is the same age as Elsword. He's looking for his dad, who was stationed in the Denif Base in Hamel when hell broke loose. Beside him, the stern, serious girl wiping her shotgun is Eve, former heiress to the Nasod technological company.

Aisha is the genius medical school student in the black overcoat, her purple hair blooming out in waves. The way Rena's tone changes when she has to introduce her speaks volumes about their animosity to Elesis.

And finally, the wordless man who almost rivals Ciel in height is Raven. He nods politely, his empty sleeve swaying from side to side in the morning breeze.  
"Now let me introduce my team," Elesis says, and turns to her team.

It's easy enough finding descriptions for everyone. Ara is the best girlfriend in the entire world. Add is just Add, the guy who fixes their stuff and makes them take baths. Ain is from ELIA, and his mum is the lady who spearheaded the relief effort. Lu is a sweetheart, but don't piss her off, because you'll regret it. And if you make her feel uncomfortable, you won't be getting dinner, because Ciel's cooking.

Elesis falters when it comes to Rose, though. "This is Rose," she says finally. "She's a little shy, but she's a great friend, and I'm sure you'll all come to love her."

She doesn't notice the way Rose beams at her afterwards.

Elsword's team has brought with them fresh vegetables that Rena grew while they were camping in the remains of a small town in Lanox. She and Ciel sit next to each other, chattering quietly about food and herbs and medicine.

Meanwhile, Eve and Rose exchange weapons and ammo in silence next to the Battering Ram, while Add sits cross-legged on the floor next to them, disassembling an assault rifle and picking out bits of zombie flesh with a flat-headed screwdriver. Occasionally he calls out to Raven and Chung, who are washing clothes with the water from the purifier.

Up on the roof, Elesis sits chatting with Elsword, as well as Ara, Lu and the new girl, Aisha. Lu and Aisha were supposed to go fetch water from the creek, but it was a quick task, and now they're "watching the roof" with the rest of them. The winter cold dissipates with the thirteen people moving about, and brings about an almost summery nostalgia.

"So then Mom and Dad went with the lady from ELIA, and we left the barn," Elsword chatters brightly. "And then we just kind of picked up everyone else along the way. The newest person to join our group was Eve, and she came during the Second Summer."

"We just got Add a month ago," Ara pipes up. "Actually, we just kind of crashed into this town and he gave up and joined us."

"You knocked him to the ground and pointed your assault rifle at his head until I came to stop you," Elesis says, punching her lightly in the shoulder. "But yeah, Ara and I kinda just bumped into each other in the wasteland and made a team."

"The fact that the two of you spent an entire year trying to deny that you were hot for each other still gets me," Aisha laughs, to which Lu giggles. "I don't think I could deny my own feelings for that long!"

Elesis smiles, pretends to not notice the way Aisha's hand tugs at Elsword's sleeve and how his hand lies just a little too far up on her leg. "We'd only just met. It would have been awkward to just confess on the spot," she chuckles, pressing a chaste kiss to Ara's cheek. "Besides, we're here now, aren't we? So-"

From below, there's a whistling noise, before it cuts off abruptly. "Lunch is ready," Ciel says, his voice distant. "It's minestrone."

Lu whoops and jumps to her feet. "C'mon, Aisha, you gotta try Ciel's minestrone!"

They dash down the trapdoor, and Elsword, not wanting to compete, goes down the ladder, leaving Elesis and Ara on the roof. "Today has certainly been more exciting than I'd expected," Ara says, lazily stretching her arms over her head. "But I gotta say something."

"And that is?" Elesis hums, getting up and pulling her up as well.

Ara grins. "I still haven't had breakfast."

The euphoria of reuniting with Elsword dies down, only to be replaced with the adrenaline to race to get a serving of the minestrone made with actual fresh vegetables.

(It's very, very good.)

* * *

 **A/N: i think i've mastered the art of updating even when i have like eight assignments and tests on my plate**

 **after i finish the _All that is Gold_ arc, i'll probably be taking a break so i can a) catch up on sleep b) finish writing _Black Swan_ and c) get some more technical stuff in for WtWE involving planning and locations and character backstories. i'll most likely put up my reserve story during that time so that i keep up my schedule**

 **and oh dear, i really hope these kids can learn to get along, it'd be a shame for bad things to happen because of their rivalries**

 **~Marg**


	11. All That is Gold (III)

They share stories by the light of the lamp in the abandoned grocery store, and for the first time in years, the little building is home to more than six people (and one cat). Everyone has different tales to share, after all, and experiences that once seemed so strange turn out to be not all that exclusive at all.

"We lived in a barn for two months last year," Chung recalls. "I think that's the longest time we stayed in the same place. Aside from that, we've never stayed in one place for more than a month."

"You forgot Lanox," Rena sighs, sinking into the nest of cardboard boxes she's built for herself. "How else do you think I grew all those vegetables?"

Elesis has to think for a moment. "Lu, how long did we stay in your town when we first showed up?"

"Twelve days and three hours," Lu responds cheerfully. "You wanted to stay for two weeks, but then the building next door blew up, so we ran for the hills and didn't look back."

A few of them grimace. "Yikes," Elsword mutters. "Our team is just constantly on the move because there are so many other hostile survivor groups out and about." He pauses. "Don't want a repeat of Chloe's bunch."

His team looks visibly more on edge, and for a moment Elesis is scared that they'll turn on her team, her _new family_ , but then Ara jumps in to save the day. "Hey, do you guys wanna play Never Have I Ever, the zombie apocalypse version?"

It ends up being surprisingly fun, albeit a bit depressing. There's a stream of laughter over the question of accidentally eating a bug. Almost everyone has to put a finger down when Chung brings up the matter of having to put a family member or friend down, and Elesis simply glances at Elsword and the fact that even he has to lower a finger. Ara (truthfully!) says that she's never had sex after the Outbreak, and everyone watches as Elsword, Aisha, Eve and Chung all go red, glance at each other, and lower a finger.

In the end, the winner is Ain. "Aw, c'mon, man, you've literally done nothing!" Elsword chortles. "Is it because you're from ELIA?"

Ain smiles enigmatically and shakes his head. "I don't think my affiliation with ELIA has anything to do with the fact that I haven't accidentally eaten a bug yet."

"Yeah, but you can't just say that you haven't at least had a close call with a zombie," Aisha argues, gesturing around with her hands. "There's got to be more stuff that you've been subjected to in this hell of a wasteland."

"Hmm. It's less likely than you'd think," he says, and looks very confused when Elsword and Lu burst out laughing. Elesis just rolls her eyes - memes have been dead since the outbreak, but there's nothing stopping her childish brother from bringing them back.

They filter off after that, a few at a time, to go to sleep. Elsword's team takes the storeroom with the empty shelves, setting up their sleeping bags on the first few layers, while Elesis's team stays in Add's small room in the back. Raven offers to take the night shift, and ends up shouldering the duty with Ciel.

In the end, though, it's just Elesis and Elsword sitting in an empty part of the store, in what was once possibly the cereal aisle. Dynamo is curled up in a ball beside them, and sleeps contentedly as Elsword strokes his back.

"How do you deal with them?" Elsword asks quietly. "Ain and Lu, I mean. They hate each other's guts, don't they?"

"You've gotten better at reading people," Elesis notes, leaning back against a shelf. "I try to mediate when I can, and when I need to. They've gotten better at understanding that they tear the team apart when they argue." She pauses. "The others help, too. Ara gets along great with Lu, so when there's arguments that spring up, she takes Lu aside and gets her to calm down. And Ciel seems to be on good terms with Ain, so he can rein them both in."

She laughs out loud, listening to her voice echo through the empty aisles. "Overall, it's a bit of a team effort," she says. "Why? What's happening?"

Elsword stares down at Dynamo's sleeping form, fingers brushing past the cat's bony back. "Rena and Aisha, as I'm sure you've noticed, have hated each other since day one," he says. "You know how Rena was a nurse? Aisha was a med school student. They keep trying to pull rank over each other with medical issues.

"When Eve first joined us, she had a nasty cut that looked like it was starting to get infected," he continues. "Rena wanted to cut her entire arm off, in case the virus was spreading. Aisha insisted that the damage was localized, and the virus hadn't spread yet."

"So who was right?" Elesis asks. "I mean, Eve still has her arm now, right?"

"Neither of them were right," he replies. "Amidst their arguing, they'd forgotten the fact that Eve had gotten the wound in the first place because she'd scraped herself on a branch. It wasn't infected with the virus to begin with." He sighs. "I really don't want to take sides, but we've known Rena for so long that it feels bad to not side with her."

They sit in silence for a while afterwards. "Then you take Rena's side, and you defend her viewpoint against Aisha's," Elesis summarizes. "How does Aisha respond to this?"

"I..." There's a look of sullen guilt on Elsword's face. "I don't know. She doesn't typically talk to me about it."

"What is she to you?" Elesis asks, poking her brother's side playfully. "Are you two an item?"

Elsword bites his lip. "Actually, the item might be bigger than the two of us," he says slowly. "I know you saw us having close contact, but." He waves around aimlessly, looking for words but not finding them. "Sometimes we do that with Chung and Eve, too."

"Oh." Somehow, Elesis isn't surprised. The brash leader, his cold second-in-command, the egoistic healer and the silent new girl. It's quite a combination, and although it takes a moment to absorb, Elesis takes it without a second thought. "Do they also feel like this is a four-way kind of thing?"

"Oh please," Elsword snorts. "It's not like I haven't caught the two of them making out behind an old shed before they pretend nothing happened, and it's definitely not like I haven't caught both of them making out with Aisha behind an old shed before they pretend nothing happened."

He lowers his gaze guiltily. "It was just Aisha, Chung, Rena and I at first," he says. "It was awkward tiptoeing around the whole business with Rena around, because she's, like, practically our squad mom." He laughs out loud. "And then Raven came around, and then Rena and Raven were too busy tiptoeing around each other to be worrying over us. And then Eve came, and then we just sort of assimilated her into our little clique."

"Are Raven and Rena a thing?" Elesis thinks back to dinner, how they awkwardly sat down next to each other before each moving to find someone else to sit next to. "It doesn't feel like they are."

"That's the thing: they aren't." Elsword grimaces. "Raven is ex-military, too - police, I think. After the outbreak, he and a bunch of his friends went back to their hometown, but everyone was already gone. Raven lost his fiancée in the onslaught, and then he lost his arm, and then he lost his friends because one of them turned and killed all the others."

"What does Rena- oh." Elesis inhales. "She looks like the dead fiancée, doesn't she."

Elsword nods. "It's kind of sad, really," he admits. "Rena doesn't know why Raven is so cold with the others and only really talks to her. He sometimes shuts everyone out, and no one can help him, not even her. I worry for them. All of them.

"I'm sorry if they were kind of on edge earlier," he says. "We have a strict policy of not merging with other groups of survivors, because last year when we tried that..." His voice falters. "Chloe and her bunch took Ignia from us. We found her tied up in a barn after they'd abandoned her to the zombies." He tries to say more, but his voice clogs up. "I want our new friends to be friends with each other, too."

A sad sort of silence lingers over them, one that says _I want to be a better leader_ and _what if we weren't stuck in this hell. What would happen then._ The cold of the night envelopes the store, which remains the only source of life in the dead town.

"Do you have any regrets?" Elesis finally asks, fiddling with a lock of Elsword's impossibly soft hair. "Like, is there anything you wish you'd done in the Before?"

"I wish I'd talked to Mom and Dad more." It's nothing new, and even though Elsword and Elesis are (were?) close to their parents, there's nothing left in this world that says they aren't dead. "I really miss them."

"I know." Elesis wraps her arm around his shoulder. "I miss them too. And I missed you, too."

"I know."

The silence is almost blissful. Elesis watches as her brother grows up right in front of her, and suddenly she is more proud of him than she could have ever imagined.

* * *

 **A/N: wow! more information!**

 **the next chapter is supposed to be Rena's _In the Before_ but i haven't gotten around to writing it, although i have some chapters in reserve waiting. i've planned out a whole two other arcs after this one, so be prepared for more adventuring!**

 **there might be some more uh nitty gritty stuff in this arc though, mostly relating to actual issues i think people would have during the zombie apocalypse, but that's why there is an M rating on this fic! overall, i think the next few arcs will be very interesting and vastly different!**

 **~Marg**


	12. All That is Gold (IV)

"You're up early," Elesis comments when Rena steps out of the storeroom, already fully dressed and armed.

"It's become a habit." Rena shrugs. "Really, I should be sleeping more... but I've gotten used to taking the night shift with Raven. We're supposed to swap at three, so I'm really getting up much later than usual."

She cocks her head. "And why are you up at this hour?"

Elesis gives her a wry smile. "Gotta make sure Ciel isn't dead on the roof," she says. "He's gonna become nocturnal at this rate. Ara and I try to shoulder the night shift with him, but he insists on doing it himself."

"Your boys are well-behaved," Rena notes, pulling on her black hood to block out the morning wind. It's only five in the morning, after all. Her braid sways from side to side as she walks. "They don't give you trouble."

"I suppose. Ain and Lu get in spats, but no one goes as far as to, I dunno, attack each other." Elesis glances at her childhood friend, the girl she idolized that has now become so stranger to her. "Hope you guys don't deal with that."

Rena is silent, only raises her arm and fidgets with the mechanisms on her crossbow. "That Aisha girl," she mutters, retrieving what seems like a homemade arrow made from a pencil, "you can't trust what she says. She's got some sort of god complex because she has an early admittance to med school." She snorts. "Thinks she can make the cure and save all the zombies with sunshine and rainbows.

"The infected won't make it." Rena starts to wind up the crossbow. "Even if you were somehow able to purge the virus from their bodies, would they survive afterwards? Their bodies have rotted beyond repair. It's not a matter of reversing the virus anymore - it's about purging the infected so the virus doesn't spread to us."

She fires the crossbow, listening to the arrow whistle through the store before hitting the opposite wall with a satisfying thunk. "Then again, who am I to say anything?" She says, almost laughs. "I'm just a lowly nurse. I don't have any real power to make any medical decisions for anyone, let alone the fate of mankind."

Elesis sits in stunned silence as Rena pats her shoulder gently. "I'm gonna go check on Ciel, and then I'll go make breakfast," she says. "Are you okay with bean soup?"

"Yeah," Elesis replies weakly, nodding.

What happened to Rena? What happened to the lively, happy young woman that made so many people smile in her youth? Elesis looks at the woman in the black coat walking away from her, and she sees a stranger.

She stares at Rena until she disappears up the trapdoor to the roof, and then she crosses over to the other side of the room.

The pencil arrow is bright orange, like the pencils that they used at school as kids. It's embedded in the wall, and no matter how hard Elesis tugs, she can't get it out.

It plagues her for days to come, like a thorn in her side that looks like Rena, looks like home, and feels like a stranger.

* * *

 **A/N: i lied, i did get Rena's _In The Before_ done but i think i'm gonna wait until next week to release it**

 **otherwise, i feel like mcfreaking dying, i can feel myself being unproductive and i can't stop it and my ib french exams are literally three days away**

 **~Marg**


	13. In the Before (III)

Rena has seen many people call her many different things over the years, and it doesn't even phase her anymore.

(Tragic. Ambitious. Haunted. Broken.)

(A monster.)

Her earliest memories are of dancing. Her mother finds her twirling in front of a mirror at the age of three, shaking around her soft skirt like it's a tutu, and signs her up for ballet lessons.

It's very, very anxiety inducing at first, because Rena was shy even for a three-year old, but then one day she shows up to class and a little girl with the brightest smile greets her, a familiar little girl.

"Rena, this is your cousin Lua," Mother tells her. "Say hi."

So Lua becomes her best friend, and ballet class becomes the greatest thing ever. The tiny, tubby four year old Rena turns into the slim and willowy seven year old Rena, and Lua shoots up like a stalk of bamboo next to her.

Sometimes, Lua and her mum walk over to Rena's house like it's no big deal, and Grandma Branwen will smile at Lua and lead her in. Rena always catches her grandmother glaring at her aunt when they think she isn't looking, but Rena knows more than she lets on.

"I don't think Grandma likes your mom very much," she confides to Lua after her mother has left. "They tell each other mean things when we're playing."

"It's because Grandma doesn't like my dad," Lua sighs, brushing her doll's hair with a small comb. "She wants him to leave my mom alone."

Rena stops doing ballet when she is eight, because every time she ties on her slippers, the ghost of Lua haunts her, bloodied and laughing at Rena.

( _She didn't have to die, the driver didn't have to drive that quickly, Lua didn't have to die and now Rena's going to be haunted by her forever-_ )

Even though Lua's things are slowly removed from the house, her spirit still lingers, covered in blood and laughing through her tears. Even when Rena tries to scream at her, to tell her _get away from me_ , Lua sits in the corner of her vision, tilting her head and watching as her blood spills out.

Under her grandmother's insistence, Father takes her to see a psychologist, a doctor who diagnoses her with PTSD. She tells Rena that she can make Lua stop, but it'll take time, and Rena takes it. She ignores the laughing and the blood on her hands, and pretends she didn't hear the psychologist tell Father that she doesn't think Rena will ever stop being haunted.

While Lua haunts her in her nightmares, her parents haunt her in real life. They show up at Rena's house often, demanding things from Grandma like money and shelter and sometimes Rena herself. Grandma yells things at them for hours before Mother throws them out physically, fuming and angry. Father sits in the back room with Rena during these times, teaching her how to play checkers and Monopoly until Lua's parents leave.

(But then Lua's ghost comes back, so is it really worth it?)

Eventually, Grandma gets fed up, and when Rena turns ten, they move away from their home in Maple and back to Elrios, where Father comes from. They go to live with her paternal grandparents, who don't always get along with Father, but they love Rena and Mother and Grandma Branwen with all their heart, so Rena is happy.

Their new neighbours are quite interesting, too. The Siegharts have a two year old daughter, Elesis, who has flaming red hair not unlike her father and a permanent impish grin. When her parents are at work and her grandparents are all at the community centre, Rena doesn't go home after school, but heads to the Siegharts' house to play with Elesis and do her math homework.

It's the first time she's felt happy in a long, long time. Lua's ghost only barely lingers in the corner of her mind, and playing with Elesis leaves a sense of peace over her. The year she turns eleven, the Siegharts have another child - Elsword, a tiny baby boy who Rena instantly becomes enamoured with.

"Babies are very fragile," Mother frets when Mrs. Sieghart lets her hold the newborn Elsword. They're in the hospital to deliver useless things (flowers) and more useful things (baby clothes and the new baby car seat) and although Rena is nervous, she holds Elsword the way she's seen Mother and Father hold him. "Are you sure you want Rena to hold him, Ellie?"

Mrs. Sieghart only smiles warmly at Rena. "I'd trust your daughter with my life, Lilia."

So then Rena finds herself even more often at the Siegharts' place, watching Elesis as Mrs. Sieghart fusses over Elsword. Even though she herself is young, she feels older than she is when she calmly plays with Elesis, just as Father did for her.

The past they left behind in Maple catches up to her, though. Her aunt and uncle track them down, hound them for money _again_ , and at the end of it, they leave her family alone for good but they leave another ghost behind. Grandma Branwen has a heart attack, and although Mother reacts quickly and calls an ambulance and does everything she can, Grandma doesn't make it.

The first time Rena sees the Sieghart children wear black is at Grandma's funeral. Elsword is barely just a year old, and has barely worn anything that isn't bright colours or pastels. Elesis looks slightly uncomfortable in her black dress, and cries when they lower Grandma into the ground.

Her ghost isn't bloody like Lua's, but blank and frozen, and the sound of her struggling to breathe is what makes Rena wake up at night in tears.

In high school, Rena joins both the archery team and the fencing team, despite having no experience with either sport. She picks up quickly, though, and in tenth grade, they put her on the competitive team for both.

She uses it to fight against the ghosts. Every jab of her épée pushes the car away from Lua, and every arrow she fires pierces through the blood clot in Grandma's artery. It doesn't make Lua stop laughing, but it makes her whole again, and it makes Grandma's rattling breathing smooth again.

War breaks out against Maple when she graduates from high school, but Rena cannot put her medals and trophies from archery and fencing to use to protect Elrios. Instead, she takes her well-earned marks and enters nursing school, because even though blood only reminds her of Lua's broken form, it could have saved Grandma.

She graduates nursing school when the war ends, and she finally returns to Ruben to look at the kids she practically watched grow up. Elesis is fourteen and determined to join the military "to protect everyone!" and Elsword is hot on her heels, despite only being eleven. She ruffles their hair and reminds them that they still need to get through school, helps them with their math homework instead of preventing Elesis from accidentally smacking Elsword in the face with a baseball bat.

What Rena doesn't expect is for Elesis to actually go to military college, and for Elsword to follow in her footsteps. One minute, she waves goodbye to Elesis as she dons her uniform for the first time -

And the next, the world collapses around her, and begins to burn.

She's at work when she hears the news of the outbreak, and even though there's no true confirmation, her boss passes out boxes of masks to each of them, so that they can start to distribute them. "If you need to, go home and make sure your children are safe," he tells them all, because Tina from oncology is crying about her daughter. "Go, go, go!"

And even though they're not her children, Rena has watched Elsword and Elesis grow up, so she runs, rips through the city streets amidst chaos, until she finds her street.

Elsword, thank goodness, is at home for the weekend, and so when Rena crashes through his front door with masks and gloves, she clutches him to her like a lifeline. "Where are your parents?" She demands, shoving a mask over her face. "And where are _my_ parents?"

"My folks are coming back from work," he yells, muffled by the mask. "I called your mom, she said she was going to go pick up your grandparents from the community centre!"

In the end, Elsword's parents return. Rena's don't. The community centre is a massacre, and Rena thinks she sees the remains of her mother's car in flames.

But now is not the time for them to panic. They grab all their valuables, and Rena, if it's worth anything, takes her prized épée and recurve from high school and all her arrows, even the ones with the broken fletchings. She sharpens their tips with a nail file while Mr. Sieghart drives out of the city, towards the suburbs.

Then the ghosts return at night, and they bring back friends. Lua laughs upon her bloody throne as Grandma Branwen opens her mouth and the horrible rattling sound comes out with a torrent of blood. Mother and Father's prone forms lie burning at the base of the throne, and Grandmother and Grandfather lie in bloody _chunks_ in a blazing ring around the throne.

The worst ghost is Elesis. She stands at attention next to Lua, in a perfectly still salute, before her stoic expression turns into an insane grin, and her skin starts to mottle into a dirty, dirty green.

Rena wakes up screaming, and it takes all three of her companions to calm her down and get her back to sleep.

Rena has been haunted for a long time. She'll survive a little longer. Zombies are nothing compared to the nightmares that have plagued her since her childhood.

(She wonders, though, if she'll haunt anyone else when she goes.)

* * *

 **A/N: hallelujah i've survived ib french exams** **(but at what cost)**

 **i'm thinking of taking a short break from WtWE to a) finish up _Black Swan_ and b) publish one of my other reserve fics, as well as work on some other projects. please bear with me.**

 **~Marg**


	14. All That is Gold (V)

"Are you Elsword's older sister?"

Elesis spins around, putting a small smile on her face. "Yeah. What's up?"

Raven, the tall man with only one arm, coughs awkwardly. "Sorry. I couldn't tell at first. The Empyrean girl also has very red hair."

"Huh." Elesis has only ever seen Rose's hair as blonde, but that's only because her own hair is so explosively red. Maybe the eyes of a stranger can reveal a lot. "Never thought of it that way. What can I do for you?"

Raven looks very uncomfortable, considering Elesis is swinging her crowbar aggressively at a tree, chipping off pieces of bark. "I was wondering where you got that crowbar."

She raises her weapon. "This?" The truth is that she found it in the trunk of the police cruiser that she used to skip out of Velder, so she conveys that to Raven. "It's been with me since."

"Oh. That's a long time." Raven reaches to his side, extracting his weapon - a bright red aluminum baseball bat, with a tightly-wound black grip that looks like it's only recently been reapplied. "Elsword says you used to play baseball."

"We both did," Elesis chuckles, as Raven lightly tosses the bat into her waiting hands. She makes a test swing - the bat is fairly balanced in her hands, almost complementing the way her form contorts. "Not bad, not bad."

Raven gives her a wry smile. "That's what I'm here to present you with." He gestures at her crowbar. "I was in the police force before this all happened."

Elesis files that information for later, in the back of her mind. "Do you want to swap?" She asks, handing the crowbar to him. "I mean, the hook is great for ripping off zombie heads, but I miss being able to crack skulls with a baseball bat."

"That kind of implies that you've done that before," Raven says, raising an eyebrow."

Elesis shrugs unapologetically. "Takes about seventy three Newtons of force to crack a human skull," she recites, recalling what her grade twelve physics teacher told her. "The average baseball swing is over thirty four hundred Newtons. Even a kid just swinging a bat around can manage a thousand or more." She smiles. "I was a pretty strong kid."

Raven winces. "I've heard. From your brother and from Rena."

"Is she doing alright?" Elesis asks, swinging the bat around in her hand. It feels like she's holding home in her hands, the perfect response to the perfect pitch. "I spoke to her earlier, and it seems like she's constantly on edge about something."

"Probably Aisha." Raven gives her a knowing smile. "It's not either of their faults, really. The blame there really lies on your brother."

Elesis blanks for a second. "Elsword? Has he been pitting them against each other or something?"

"Not knowingly. They fight for his compassion. He has a lot to give, but it's not enough for them." He sighs. "Especially for Rena. She dotes on him like a mother dotes on her son, but it's not what he needs."

He lifts the crowbar onto his shoulder. "Thank you for swapping with me, by the way," he says. "I hope the bat will serve you well."

And as he leaves, Elesis stares down at the bat in her hands, and thinks about how much of her brother she really still knows.

It's not enough. It's never enough.

* * *

 **A/N: and we're back!**

 **short chapter,** **but the next few will be longer! a lot longer in fact, I had to cut one in half because it was getting out of hand**

 **on another note i'm moving back here because my new update for _And the Garden in my Heart Blossoms_ is a little short for my tastes**

 **exams are happening this week and my last exam is next monday, but i do have a bunch of reserve chapters left so if i don't post next week, assume i've been murdered by exams**

 **~Marg**


	15. All That is Gold (VI)

"How do you deal with it?" Aisha asks, swinging her legs over the side of the ruined porch. From the way her heels knock against the bricks, it's clear that she once had high heels, but was forced to cut them off. "The hormones and stuff."

Lu frowns. "Hormones?" She thinks for a moment. "Like, emotional swings?"

"Partially that." Aisha studies her with curious eyes. "Partially also homesickness. And feeling useless. And the need to bash a few hundred heads in with the leg of a table."

"Oh." Lu smiles as Dynamo yawns in her lap, continuing to snooze. "I guess... Well, I don't go through... Y'know, _that_ , because the outbreak happened before I hit puberty. I never really started. Maybe that's why I can keep it under check a bit more."

She turns her gaze out to the field. "I know Ara is constantly suffering," she muses. "Elesis and Rose are ex-military, so they had IUDs from before. There's only so much we can find of the pill that's not already expired. But because of it, Ara has a really, really high pain tolerance. She dislocated her shoulder falling off a building once, and all she did was shrug it back into place."

Aisha shudders. "Yikes. She's hardcore."

"Yeah. So out of all of us, I think the only one who really has hormonal issues is Ara." Lu smiles wryly. "But don't take my word for it, I don't know what the difference is for myself. Who knows, maybe I've just always been this way."

She reaches into her pocket and extracts a small stack of apricots. They're running out - she should find another snack to keep around. "Apricot?" She asks, offering one to Aisha. The other girl accepts it gratefully, pops it into her mouth and crunches through it.

They sit in silence on the porch for a bit, eating apricots and feeding bits to Dynamo when he wakes up. "Are you from overseas?" Aisha asks. "You toss your words upwards, like you're always asking a question. Maple?"

"Exactly," Lu says. "And you?"

"Southern Empyrean. You ever heard of a town called Ithilien?" Aisha gives her a shit-eating grin. "Great people, great food, lots of sand, and the shittiest education system in the history of education systems. My parents moved us to Bethma when I was about a year old."

"Cool." Lu thinks about the one she'd been to Empyrean when she was six, when her parents had brought her along on a business trip (or was it diplomatic?). It had been hot and she was a whiny, whiny child. "I was born and raised in Maple. Came here for my first year of high school."

Aisha's brows furrow as she tries to do the math. "Oh my god, you didn't even get to finish high school," she realizes in horror.

"Correction, I didn't even get to _start_ high school," Lu offers kindly. "But it's alright. I went to a pretty good elementary in Maple, but my parents stacked all sorts of tutoring programs on top of that. I was doing calculus in grade seven."

"Yikes," Aisha mutters, wincing. "Yeah. I know how that feels. My mom had me reading Shakespeare when I was six."

"That's always awful," Lu comments. "I always did like Ibsen better."

Okay, maybe that was a lie - Lu hates Ibsen. In eighth grade, when her class decided to put on a production of _Hedda Gabler_ , the entire class had voted her to play Hedda. She'd wanted to play Thea.

It wasn't until opening night that everyone realized just how much she'd hated the role. Lu's Hedda was bland, cold and hysterical, which was heavily applauded, but on every night of the play, she'd refused to say her final line, instead opting to just fire the toy gun and collapse in silence.

Her parents thought she'd ruined the play. She was grounded for two months. Lu still hates Ibsen for it.

"Ibsen's really good too," Aisha says quietly, skimming the edge of another apricot across her lips. "My mom wanted me to go into literature like her. I hated every moment of it. I wanted to be a doctor instead."

"If it's any help, I'd trust you to be my family doctor," Lu offers, and they laugh.

"Thank you." Aisha grins. "Maybe when this is all over, I'll go back and finish med school. And you need to finish high school!"

Lu only gives her a sad smile.

"I still gotta start first."

* * *

 **A/N: guess who kicked exams in the ass (hint: not me)**

 **but hey i'm alive for now and i have time to actually work on things! my summer's gonna be pretty packed though so who knows if i'll actually get things done**

 **yes we did hedda gabler in english class. yes i hated it (as a piece; i genuinely like english as a subject tho). no i did not play hedda in my class, my teacher did. i did aunt juliana tesman for the majority of the play. yes hedda kills herself at the end**

 **not that i like shakespeare much better though**

 **~Marg**


	16. All That is Gold (VII)

There's no real table in the grocery store, and the one in the employees' room is covered in supplies, so instead, they hold their medical war council around a stack of wooden pallets.

The thirteen of them crowd around in circles as Ain lays out what remains of his vaccines. He's been administering them to his group for about a year now, and while he still has some of each, it's definitely not going to be enough for him to vaccinate the newcomers. They'll have to grow more antivirus in a controlled setting, which is hard to find in a situation like this.

"Alright," Elsword says out loud. Ain quite likes Elesis's younger brother - he's friendly, and has half a mind to befriend everyone on their team. "Ain, can you run us through what they've figured out up in the Nirvana?"

Ain stands up and breathes in. "Of course." He offers everyone a smile, even though he knows he won't get many in return. "My mother, Doctor Ishmael, is the head of ELIA. However, my knowledge of what's happening is from about a year and a half ago, so I apologize if my current understanding is not up to date.

"As inhumane as it may be, there have been experiments carried out on the zombies." The purple haired girl - Aisha - makes a small gasping noise, but Ain files that aside for later and continues speaking. "Some developments have been made in regards to the components of the zombie virus, but not all.

"The current major issue with the virus is that it's simply too volatile. It really is just a packet of DNA with claws, but once it gets into a cell, it will spread to all of your existing cells at an alarming rate. Experiments have been slow, and under quarantine to prevent anyone from being infected. There's about a fifty-fifty chance that a given sample of the virus will spread or die entirely.

"What we do know, however, are some of the viruses that make up parts of the zombie virus's genetic code." Ain shakes his head slightly. "Actually, let me refer to it by its proper name. The official name designated for the virus is HNR-926."

"Henir, September 26," Rena mutters. "The day he released it."

"Exactly," Ain agrees. "So far, we've discovered three viruses whose genetic codes have gone into the creation of HNR-926.

"First, ebolavirus." He pushes the bottle of red liquid forwards, ignoring the friction of smooth glass on rotting wood. "I don't know how much all of you understand of ebolavirus, but it does not kill. The killing factor is ebolavirus _fever_ , which is caused by the virus. We always thought ebolavirus was part of the genetic makeup of HNR, because of the state of the victims. There are a lot of mutations that ebolavirus can't account for, so we're still figuring out where that's going.

"Next, rabies. I think this was kind of obvious, considering how the virus is spread and how it affects cognitive ability." This time, the bottle of golden liquid nearly tips over as he pushes it forwards, but Ciel reaches a hand forwards to steady it. "Thank you. Rabies is spread primarily through saliva, which is why the zombies are seeking to bite instead of scratch typically."

He picks up the last bottle, filled with blue liquid. "Now, we weren't entirely expecting it, but within the genetic code there were fragments that connected together," he says. "And to this day we still don't know if it was intentional or not, but these fragments, when put together, form part of the coding for influenza."

"That's practically airborne," Aisha says in horror. "Do zombies sneeze?"

Ain winces. "Yes and no," he says cautiously. "As far as we know, they don't really sneeze or cough, which usually reduces the chances that they can create aerosols with the virus. However, they can still spread through other means, mostly through transmission of bodily fluids.

"Zombie blood," he says, turning to Ciel. "That's why you always cover your face after you snipe a zombie in the streets." He turns to Rose. "Why your idea with the bleach guns were really good - except for the bleach burns. Sorry about that."

"Basically, so far you guys have figured out what goes into HNR," Chung says, "and you've got the vaccines for those three viruses?"

"Bingo." Ain holds up a bottle. "There's only so much of it I have on me, but I'll get around to vaccinating all of you soon. It won't keep you entirely immune, but it'll fend off some of the HNR and help strengthen your immune system."

Aisha studies the three bottles and their colourful liquids intensely. "Interesting," she muses. "How often do you have to re-vaccinate everyone?"

"Once a month," Ain responds. "Or at least that's the most effective revaccination pattern. It keeps the majority of the virus at bay."

"That's really cool," she says. "Do you mind if I borrow some? Well, not borrow, but take some...? I want to experiment with it to see if I can engineer an antivirus."

"Me as well." Rena steps up to her full height, nearly half a head taller than Aisha. "I would like to conduct some of my own experiments, with what I've been noticing."

"Oh?" Ain raises an eyebrow, pretends not to notice how Aisha deflates and turns a little red with anger. "Please, do tell."

"It's not just humans who are being affected." Rena says, which Ain has known to some degree all along. "And it's not just animals, too. Plants are becoming hosts.

"I realized this while we were in Lanox. Because we were recovering from... All that happened," and their bunch all flinch, "I found some seeds in a grocery store and grew some fresh vegetables. It took a while, but we got some nice carrots and whatnot.

"And one time around, I took soil from a place close to where we'd shot down a zombie, and put it in my garden bed. You know what happened?"

She reaches into her coat, and takes out a plastic bag. Inside is what might have been a carrot, but it's shrivelled and green. White pus-like material plasters it to the inside of the ziplock bag, which has been pressed shut and possibly vacuum-sealed. "This is what came from it," she says, tossing it onto the table. "Don't touch it."

Elsword ogles at her. "You _kept_ the hell carrot?"

"This is very interesting," Ain manages to comment, feeling only slightly queasy. "It hasn't really mutated past being green and oozing, uh, carrot juice, has it?"

"Not that I know of." Rena looks distastefully at the carrot. "I had to vacate that flowerbed and abandon all those carrots. I don't think the others ended up growing, though."

"If I may interrupt," Elesis says quietly, "wouldn't the virus have just spread into the soil with the decomposition of zombies? Doesn't it mean that the ground all around us is essentially emitting HNR all the time?"

"It is," Rena confirms, "and that's why I have a theory that everyone has natural resistance against it."

She looks around for someone who hasn't spoken yet. "Raven. When was the last time you had a flu shot proper before the outbreak?"

Raven looks a bit surprised, but thinks. "Um. The October prior."

"And when was the last time Doctor Henir ever left his lab?"

"Sometime in August, three years prior to the outbreak," Chung offers. Everyone looks at him, to which he shrugs. "My dad was military."

"Anyways, what this proves is that Henir had to have used an older strain of the influenza virus," Rena concludes. "And since universal healthcare was implemented forty years ago, there's been laws made to ensure that _everyone_ got vaccinated yearly. We all have natural resistance to HNR that just keeps us alive from what's coming up from the ground."

"Speaking of resistance," Ain suddenly says, remembering what Add said, "we have come across a case of complete immunity to HNR-926."

There are murmurs coming up around from all sides of the group. "Complete immunity," Ara says. "When-"

"He's here right now, but I'd like to know if he's comfortable sharing." Ain leaves it hanging in the open, directed at no one in particular with a poker face plastered on top. "You know who you are, if you're comfortable talking about it, then by all mean-"

"I'll speak." Add stands up suddenly. "So, uh, this might take some time to explain, but I think I can say it, because this could be the fate of mankind. You guys know me as Add, but my real name is Edward. Edward Grenore."

Before he can say anything else, Eve lunges.

* * *

 **A/N: it wouldn't be me if i didn't leave a massive cliffhanger or two**

 **to anyone who knows me irl and knows how much i infodump about virology: i'm sorry this is just more of me infodumping about virology**

 **now off to downloading garry's mod**

 **~Marg**


	17. All That is Gold (VIII)

She moves too quickly for any of them to react. Even as the scream leaves Ara's lips, Eve has already moved halfway across the table. "You," she growls, one hand gripping Add's collar and the other reaching for the knife at her side. "Get out. Now."

"Eve, please," Chung calls from the other side of the table, voice pleading. "Please let him go."

Scowling, Eve releases Add's collar and steps off the table, albeit keeping her knife in hand. "You shouldn't be alive," she continues, tone only slightly less bitter. "Why are you not dead?"

Those words send a jolt of cold, cold electricity down Ara's spine. "H-hold up, Add, Eve, I think you should explain what's happening."

Add is still standing with his hands up in surrender. "I have literally never seen you before today," he says, voice trembling, "so I don't know how much I can explain."

"Your name is Edward Grenore," Eve says, still steely and gripping onto the knife so tightly that her knuckles are going white. "Your father was Asker Grenore, a scientist working under Henir."

A collective hush falls over the group. Lu has her hands over her mouth, and Ciel moves to wrap an arm around her shoulder protectively. Ain's expression is pained, like he'd suspected it all along. Aisha looks like she's about to cry.

Add's hands drop, curling into tight fists against the crude wood of the pallets. "Was. He shouldn't have been my father to begin with." He lets out a pained laugh, to which Eve recoils slightly. "I don't think the news of the divorce case ever got out of our town, which is good. My mom wouldn't have wanted it to get out.

"My parents were divorced when I was six, on grounds of my dad being an abusive bitch. He hurt my mom," he says forcefully, choking out each word. "Up until the time when I was ten, I was terrified that he would find us, even after we moved here."

"Wait, hold up," Elsword interrupts, holding his hand up like he's still in school. "Who the fuck was Asker Grenore to begin with? I've heard this name somewhere, but I'm not making the connection here."

"One of Doctor Henir's aides." Eve says quietly. "He was removed from the original team about six years before the war ended." She turns to Add. "You would have been about twelve when the war ended, correct? That lines up the time when your father was kicked from Henir's team to when your parents were divorced."

Add nods, clenching his jaw tightly. "Makes sense." He looks to Eve again. "So how do you know who I am?"

Even from a short distance away, Ara can feel the chill of her glare. "Doctor Grenore was a friend of my father." Eve suddenly drops her gaze to the table. "He came to our home shortly after the outbreak, and brought the virus with him."

"Wait." Add squints at her. "Aren't you Adrian Nasod's daughter?"

Eve hesitates for a moment before nodding. "That is correct." She offers a weak smile to the others on her team. "I apologize for withholding this information until now, but I never saw any use of telling any of you this. My name is Evangeline Nasod. I am the younger child of Adrian Nasod."

Adrian Nasod, the genius inventor. Somehow, the gears connect in Ara's fried mind, putting together a rough story that she doesn't want to read. Eve is the younger child of Adrian Nasod. She probably knows way too much about everything. She is probably dangerous.

Everyone is staring is shocked silence, including Add. "Your father came to my home after the outbreak," Eve continues. "And he infected my family. I arrived home a month later to discover everyone decaying and turning."

The air changes, becomes a little less cold as everyone starts to process the new information. "Did you kill him?" Add finally asks.

"I had to."

He nods firmly. "Good. Thank you."

Ara has to remind herself to stop nibbling the inside of her cheek, because a sore in this environment is always dangerous. She makes a note to talk to him later.

"So, uh, my dad used me as a guinea pig when I was younger," Add finally says, awkwardly diverting the entire conversation back to its original intention. "One of the reasons why my mom divorced my dad was because he basically tested a prototype of the virus on me."

"And that's why you're immune," Ain finishes. "And why you get reactions to the flu shot." He looks slightly sick as his fingers drum out the sign of the cross in front of him. "Lord have mercy on you."

The room settles into silence, the only sounds being the gentle squeak of someone's shoes against the floor. Ara reaches out, seeking Add's hand with hers. She squeezes his hand once, gently, and gets a soft drumming of his fingers against the back of her hand before he lets go.

"Well, shucks," Elsword finally manages, patting Add's shoulder only a little roughly. "Y'all had such _fraught_ childhoods compared to Elsa and I." His jaw sets a bit, turning his thousand-volt smile into something slightly defensive. "I have an idea, but it won't be pretty."

"If you need samples of my blood, go ahead and take it," Add insists. "As long as you're using sterilized needles. I really don't need to get infected."

"I'll handle that," Aisha interrupts, giving them all a soft nod before running off. Rena watches with an air of contempt, almost glaring at the other girl's back as she disappears into another room.

"That's that, I guess," Elesis says. "With what we have, we might just be able to throw together a functioning vaccine or cure for HNR. Sorry 'bout that, Add, I don't know how much of your blood they'll need." She pats the pallets a few times like she's banging a gavel on the table. "So, uh, medical war council adjourned."

Ara watches as everyone disperses off to their own little worlds again. Lu is crying a bit, and has to be comforted by her brother. Ain shakes his head out before moving with Rena to go find clean bottles to transfer some of his vaccines to.

The only ones aside from Ara who haven't moved yet are Add and Eve. They seem to be locked in some sort of silent conversation, though whatever it is, Ara can't read it. Add's face is emotionless, stoic and blank, whereas Eve's steely eyes match the rest of her cold, cold features.

Then she scoffs, turns on her heel, and leaves.

Ara puts a hand softly on Add's shoulder, and winces internally when he flinches. "Are you okay?" She asks quietly. "You seem a bit shaken."

His eyes lose some of their icy depth, but it's clear that his thoughts are still a million miles away. "I'll be alright."

 _Alright_ , Ara thinks, _doesn't exist anymore._

* * *

 **A/N: my thought process literally every monday is something along the lines of "FUCK IT'S MONDAY I HAVE TO UPDATE"**

 **followed by "oh wait i have chapters ready"**

 **now we see the cracks start to form in the team, and while no one is immature enough for this to end in bloodshed, well**

 **no one said it couldn't end with tears shed**

 **~Marg**


	18. All That is Gold (IX)

It comes as a surprise to Elesis that the first one to talk to her about it is Ciel.

"You know they can't stay," he says, which is the most words he's said to just about anyone in the past three weeks. "Too much conflict."

Elesis sighs. "Tell me about it."

To her surprise, Ciel actually sits down and starts counting the issues off his fingers. "Rena and Aisha," he says, "keep fighting behind your brother's back. Their demeanour is affecting everyone else. Nothing good will come from it.

"Aisha is on Ain's side when it comes to the whole morality thing." He scowls, though Elesis can only barely notice it beneath his medical mask. "I thought she could be good friends with Lu."

"Oh." It feels like her tongue is suddenly made of lead, dragging her words down. "Is that why she was crying earlier today?"

"Mostly." Even though it's no small secret they're not biological siblings, Elesis knows just how protective Ciel can be. His eyebrows are just slightly creased down, waiting for the order to attack. He's probably ready to _throttle_ Aisha at this point, and she's not sure if she wants that.

"Add seems to have taken interest in Eve as well," Ciel continues. "Probably for answers about his father. Eve refuses to talk to him."

Elesis grimaces. "Kind of expected that one, but there's really not much we can do."

"Fair." Ciel fidgets around with his sniper rifle, dangling from his hip. "Still. This isn't going to last. They can't stay."

Secretly, part of Elesis is glad that Ciel isn't a "either they go or I go" kind of person. She's grown attached to her team, like a hen to her chicks. If he'd genuinely left, then she'd be down one, possibly two team members if he brings Lu with him. Terrifying as it is, a future without any of the members of her team seems just as daunting as a future without her brother.

Ciel has a point, though. Elesis finds herself massively uncomfortable by the way Rena and Aisha badmouth each other to the others, and Ara has mentioned in passing that they argue when they think no one's around to listen in. Whatever their morality debate is, it's clearly having a pretty bad impact on everyone.

(And just secretly, Elesis feels the need to call Aisha out, because _no one_ makes Lu cry and gets away with it.)

But she's a leader, and it's not in her nature to just throw out the other survivors, especially since they're led by her brother. Elesis is a tactful woman who knows how to resolve issues maturely. She has four years of military education under her belt. She can reason with her brother, and she can swallow her own pride to let him go.

"I can't just kick them out," Elesis admits, before sighing. "I'll talk it over with my brother. Maybe it's about time we moved out of town anyways. Staying in one place for this long is bound to attract trouble."

Ciel gives her a longsuffering look, and she knows exactly what he's tempted to say but chooses not to.

 _They are the trouble we've attracted._

She says nothing as Ciel nods and leaves.

* * *

 **A/N: sorry for short chapter once more, I'm hoping to get some longer pieces out sometime soon (ie. another _In the Before_ )**

 **so now that the _All That is Gold_ segment is coming to an end (don't worry, there's still two more iirc), I'm going to introduce some new character-centric segments to spur the adventure. **

**also! today's a double update, i've also got the final chapter of _And So The Garden In My Heart Blossoms_ up, so please check that out as well!**

 **~Marg**


	19. All That is Gold (X)

"I've been wondering," Elesis says, "where you guys are thinking of heading after this."

Elsword briefly wonders what she means by _this_ , but says nothing and thinks. "I really want to head for the settlement in Elysion," he admits. "To see Mom and Dad again. I know Rena wants to see them again, too."

"What happened to her folks?" His sister asks. He doesn't say anything, but it must show on his face because he follows it up with a quiet "oh".

"Her grandparents were at the community centre. Her parents went to pick them up but they never came back." Elsword sighs. "I just... It's hard to think of Mrs. Erindel as _gone_ , y'know? She's always kind of there, whether you think about her or not."

"She practically raised us," Elesis mumbles, "alongside our own parents."

"They might as well have raised us," he replies, thinking about the way Rena's father smiled and how her grandparents always called him "little Elling". He only barely remembers Rena's maternal grandmother, but there's a lingering memory somewhere of her barking laughter and kind smiles. "But now they're gone. Rena cried for days and days, and I couldn't really help her."

"She has a lot of weapons on her person," Elesis notes. "She's still got her recurve in her backpack, doesn't she? It's just that-"

"Raven stole the crossbow from a sporting store for her, so I think she feels obligated to use it instead." Elsword manages to give her a smile. "If not that, it's because the crossbow is a lot stronger, you can load pencils into it for ammo, and Rena's kinda out of arrows."

He thinks about Rena crying when they sent their parents off with Camilla, and struggles to push it out. "Where do you think you're going after this?"

Elesis looks like she's been shaken out of her thoughts. "We're thinking of heading to Altera City," she says, and something in Elsword's blood freezes. "Els, I'm sorry, but-"

"Elsa, I can't lose you again," he says, voice starting to pinch. "I _can't_. Half the reason why Rena cried so long was because she thought she'd lost _you_."

"I know, but you're not going to lose me." She smiles sadly. "I'm just as constantly scared of losing you, Els. I know you're strong. I know you'll make it to Nirvana, and you'll be able to wait for me to catch up to you."

He sits, trembling, as she rises out of her seat to brush his fringe out of his face and kiss his forehead before ruffling his hair playfully. "Elsa," he complains, brushing his hair back into place. "I work hard on maintaining my undercut!"

"It's hideous and you know it," she says, grinning. "I'm _this_ close to just shearing it all off."

Elsword smacks her in the shoulder, and she responds with a playful punch to his nose.

But he sees the anxious energy in her eyes that just about no one else will be able to catch. She knows just as well as him that their teams can't stay together, and that they need to get going soon.

She's gotten too good at pretending. Elsword wonders how much of his sister is still herself.

* * *

 **A/N: wow! communication works!**

 **my heart aches for these two, though. my greatest fear is losing my younger sister, so scenes like this are always painful to write**

 **on another note _Black Swan_ is in the works and might actually be completed soon! who knows**

 **for a quick glimpse into the future of this fic, after this arc I'll be focused on Elesis's team again, as they travel to Altera, and then their adventures in Altera. please hold on until then!**

 **~Marg**


	20. All That is Gold (XI)

Among the thirteen of them, there's an unanimous decision that carrying on as a single group won't do them any good. A few looks are cast at Elesis and Elsword, who look somewhat pained to be separated again, and at Lu and Aisha, who won't even speak to each other.

Rose thinks it's probably for the best, regardless of how much it hurts Elesis to leave her brother behind again. The cocky young leader of the other group seems to deflate a bit more for every second he has to spend away from his sister, and even more for every moment he's with her. It's taking a toll on everyone, including Elesis.

And it's not just them. Rose watches everyone interact as they pack up camp and ration out supplies. Eve doesn't even bother to speak out loud before diving into the cleaning supplies, taking rolls of plastic bags and boxes of gloves and shoving them into her bags. Ciel keeps giving Aisha dirty looks after Lu cried the other day.

After making sure all her weapons and ammo in the Battering Ram are in order, Rose packs her own bag. She finds her clothes sorted and folded in a pile on the counter after Ara washed them just yesterday, and rolls them up tighter to tuck them into her bag. She looks through the stash of food they've found and picks out a bag of still edible, unopened trail mix. Lu probably would have wanted it, but she has the apricots and she won't give Rose any.

There's a soft purr at her feet and the feeling of tiny paws prodding at her shins. Rose smiles and kneels down, stroking two fingers gently down Dynamo's back. "Et tu, mon petit?" She murmurs. "Voulez-vous venir avec nous?"

Dynamo purrs all the louder, loud enough to vibrate through Rose's chest as she picks him up and brings him into another room.

Since she's just about done cleaning up her belongings, Rose figures she should take a shift on the guard. She puts Dynamo in her hood (he's a bit large for her pockets) and climbs up to the roof via the trapdoor.

Raven is on lookout at the moment, looking across the landscape with his one hand on his new crowbar and his empty sleeve dangling by his holstered pistol. "I'll take the watch," Rose tells him, to which he nods gratefully and goes back downstairs.

The roof is peaceful, even if nothing else is. There's a calm breeze that picks up her hair and blows it in curls across her face. She tugs her coat closer around her; it's only going to get colder from here on out.

"Come here," she murmurs to Dynamo, taking him out of her hood and letting him roam across the roof. "Don't fall off."

Even if he did, it probably wouldn't kill him. Rose has seen him jump off second-storey window ledges and gracefully land on the ground before. She laughs a little as she peers across what remains of the town.

In due time, they all pack up the camp beneath her. Rose watches as Elsword gets a mini tour of the Battering Ram, and only smiles a little when he sees all the weapons in the back trunk. She watches as Ciel loads the last of their food and water into the Battering Ram, as Ain bandages Add's arm and hands two vials of his blood to Aisha and Rena, as Elesis-

Elesis comes up the ladder, grinning. "Hey Rose, you done packing?" She stops to lean down and scoop up Dynamo, scratching his soft chin. "We're bringing Dynamo with us, right? Is it okay if he rides in the Battering Ram?"

Rose purses her lips as she thinks about the supplies in there. "As far as I know, it's not very safe for him to be in there," she admits. "However... I am considering abandoning the Ram sometime soon."

"Oh?" Elesis looks up, eyes wide with surprise. "Why?"

"We can reasonably carry all our food and water on us," she elaborates. "The weapons inside are not serving us anytime soon. It's rather inefficient to trek across the country and playing catch-up with a car full of explosives and food."

She inhales sharply. "Furthermore, the solar panel is starting to break. I do not know if it has been sabotaged or not, but Add has also attempted to troubleshoot and fix it, to no particular benefit."

Elesis frowns slightly. "Well, first of all, that _sucks_ ," she says, and Rose has to stifle a giggle. "Second of all, it's not a big deal honestly. We'd have to abandon it before we get to Altera anyways. We can't get around the Bethagara River escarpment, so we have to cross it, and your car isn't making it across. No offense."

"None taken." Rose sighs as she takes Dynamo out of Elesis's arms. "Do you have anything else to pack up? I can help out."

"Not much. I-" Elesis suddenly runs out to the edge of the roof, and for a moment Rose is scared that she's lost it entirely, but then Elesis gestures widely at something in the distance. "Rose. Look out there and please tell me those aren't zombies."

Rose joins her at the edge, Dynamo half-cradled in her arms and half-dangling off her shoulder. Sure enough, there's a dark mass of shuffling bodies in the near distance, about five kilometers from the edge of town. "Those can't be zombies," she reasons, mostly to herself. "They have weapons."

And they are. Rose can make out individual shapes from within the incoming group - a woman with faded pink hair wielding a crossbow, a huge hulking man with an AK-48 strapped to his back. She reports this to Elesis, who promptly goes pale.

"We have to go," Elesis mumbles, before pulling herself together. "EVERYONE! HURRY UP, WE HAVE VISITORS AND THEY'RE ARMED!"

Dynamo yowls and leaps out of Rose's arms, scuttling down the side of the building as Elesis practically flies down the ladder, continuing to yell to everyone below.

For a heartbeat, Rose can only stare in shock, frozen. The glory days are over, she supposes, even though they hadn't really begun in the first place. She watches as Elesis fights back tears and forces her brother to swear to meet her in Elysion, and finally drops down from the roof to help Ciel shove the last of their supplies into the Battering Ram.

The glory days are over, even though they hadn't really begun in the first place.

 _Oh well_ , Rose thinks as she hits the ignition, _they were good while they lasted._

* * *

 **A/N: ahaha you all saw this coming didn't you**

 **i've been massively unproductive this entire week and i really need to finish my extended essay, but at the same time i need to finish _Black Swan_ and my other 82 million projects. please bear with me**

 **double update this week, btw, because i'm a) impatient and b) really excited to share what might just be the stupidest chapter of this entire fic, plus it's super short so i might as well**

 **~Marg**


	21. The Ghost Town and its Ghosts (VII)

"See them?"

Chloe shakes her head as she lowers her binoculars. "Damn kids booked it the moment they could," she mutters, shoving the binoculars towards one of the twins. "I was hoping we could score a hostage or two."

Scar scoffs. "They had someone on lookout. I heard a woman screaming a few kilometres back."

"That doesn't matter!" Chloe flicks her knife out of her sleeve and glares at the high point of the town - a small grocery store, with a hastily-plastered wall that was clearly once a glass sliding door, and a homemade ladder dangling from the side. "They got away, and we're stuck with this again!"

"Their group was huge," Jin says, eyes wide. "They had, like, fifteen people. I saw them split into two groups as they left."

"And did you see where they went?" Chloe growls, whipping around to grab the other girl by the collar. "Did you see how one of their two groups had a _car?_ Did you see how they had a _child_ in their group carrying a _cat_?"

"Chloe," In says, pained, "let go of my sister before I make you."

With a final snarl, Chloe drops Jin, who stumbles a few steps, coughing.

"They've been here a while," Karis notes, coming out of the grocery store. "The inside looks like it's been lived in."

"Did they take everything?" Chloe asks, dreading all the possible answers.

"... No," Karis manages, as Joaquin emerges from the trapdoor on the roof (there's a trapdoor?!) holding a bottle of household bleach. "There's some cans of food left, and a bunch of miscellaneous household products."

They all rush into the store, as Karis leads them to a pallet of completely unopened, untouched cans. There's a small note left on top, hastily written with a sharp pencil.

"One of our team members is allergic to seafood," Jin reads helpfully. "You can have these oyster shooters."

Chloe's aggravated scream pierces through the air, not for the first (or last) time that day.

* * *

 **A/N: *announcer voice* rest in pieces kids**

 **and thus ends the first (and technically second) arc! assuming i don't finish writing _Black Swan_ by next week, we'll be moving into the interlude, and then after that onto the Altera City arc. **

**thank you all for your support!**

 **~Marg**


	22. Borne In Blood (I)

_Elsword, you have to go._

"No," Elesis murmurs, reaching out, but her fingers pass through her brother's tears, through his skin. "You can't go. Elsword, you have to stay. You're the only family I have left."

 _Sis, I can't, what-_

 _Listen to me, Els. Promise you'll meet me in Elysion._

 _Elsa-_

 _PROMISE ME!_

Elesis chokes back a sob as the already-fading memory of her brother nods, but nothing can stop her from echoing his words in a watery warble.

 _I promise._

"Stay," Elesis sobs, as her brother crumbles to nothing in front of her. "Elsword, no. You're the only family I have left. I _can't_ lose you. Don't-"

His tearful smile shatters like glass, and Elesis wakes up screaming, screaming for her brother, for Rena and her family, for the family she's had to lose.

Then Ara's arms are around her, and her soft voice is reminding Elesis that she's loved, that her brother _will_ survive, _will_ make it to Elysion to tell the tale. Her lips are chapped but warm and loving against her skin as she continues to murmur her reassurances and grip Elesis's hand tightly.

The others join her quietly. Lu and Ciel pat her back gently as Add awkwardly puts a hand on her shoulder, and one on Ara's. She can vaguely hear Ain ask if she wants a bottle of water somewhere in the house they've taken shelter in, and nods numbly.

Rose settles down beside her, kneeling on the floor by the bed as she takes Elesis's other hand. Her fingers are cold and the fabric of her gloves is smooth as she rubs soft circles into her palm. "He is safe," she says quietly, and Elesis gets the odd feeling that the other girl is holding back her own tears. "He'll be alright. They'll all be alright, I know it."

Elesis wants to apologize for being a shitty leader to this little band she calls her new family, she _has to_ , but their soft smiles and kind touch keeps her floundering for air. Ain shows up with a fresh bottle of water, stale and lukewarm but unopened. "Don't sweat it," he says. "I really cannot blame you for having a hard time so soon after leaving."

And really, Elesis should be apologizing, but she can't help but laugh. She pulls her hands away from Ara and Rose, reaching for the water bottle with one hand and wiping away her tears with the other as she lets out a bit of a tearful giggle.

"Thank you," she says, laughing through her tears. She doesn't know who she's laughing at, but it's probably herself. "God, I must be a mess right now, aren't I?"

She falls back asleep to their beatific, gentle smiles, and the kindness of their touch.

* * *

 **A/N: concept: me actually finishing anything that i start**

 **so uhhh i'm going on vacation next saturday and i'll be away until i think the monday afterwards, meaning i won't be able to upload anything. however! there is no way i'm going to let my upload streak die, so i'm going to hand my account over to my best friend for that week and hope that she doesn't a) post the wrong chapter to the wrong fic or b) embarrass me too much in the A/Ns**

 **this is the start of a new segment, btw! _Borne In Blood_ is Elesis's personal segment, and anything in this segment will be her own thoughts and experiences.**

 **for reference the house that the team is currently staying in is probably somewhere in rural Elder**

 **~Marg**


	23. Qui Vivra Verra (I)

"Wait, Rose, you forgot to bring an umbrella!"

Rose whirls around, fingers already on the triggers of her pistols. Just behind her, Lu stands awkwardly, hands (and umbrella) in the air. "Please don't startle me like that," Rose says sheepishly, putting the safety back on and shoving her pistols into their holsters. "Thank you for the umbrella, though."

"Are you gonna go scout out the area?" Lu asks, handing the umbrella to her and extracting another one from her pocket. Rose briefly wonders if there's no end to the space in her pockets, since she knows the younger girl has managed to hide Dynamo in her pocket on multiple occasions. "Can I go with you?"

"Ah, I suppose." Rose smiles kindly. "At any rate, it will be safer for us both." She pauses for a second, thinking quickly about the things that Lu has on her person. "Are you armed?"

Lu pushes aside her jacket to reveal her pistols holstered on her hips. The handle of her silvery knife peeks out from within her sleeve. "Never go anywhere without them." She gives Rose a grin that is all teeth and no humour. "Or Dynamo, for that matter."

The cat pokes his head out of Lu's other pocket, as if on cue. Rose is somehow not surprised. "We should leave Dynamo in the house," she says, frowning. "If we really get in a skirmish out there, it might be dangerous for you - and him - to be running around."

Lu sniffs. "Ain said I shouldn't let him around in the house until Elesis recovers."

Rose's blood freezes instantly. The thought of the fuzzy housecat tracking in traces of the virus and exposing it to their currently vulnerable leader is enough to make her clench her fists and attempt to hide them in her jacket. "Alright, then."

They wave goodbye to Ciel on their way out. He salutes them with two fingers from his place on the roof. Rose smiles. She's outgrown trying to correct their salutes, but the urge still hits her at odd times.

"How long do you think the house will hold together?"

The question instantly snaps her out of her thoughts. "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?" She says, glancing at Lu.

"How long do you think the house will stay together without falling down," Lu clarifies, stroking the top of Dynamo's head with two fingers. "I mean, the foundations are eroded from flooding. The roots of the trees in the backyard are digging into the basement - I checked it out when Ciel and I tried to turn the boiler on. The floors are crumbling." She kicks a rock out of her way, and it goes flying into a nearby tree. "I'm starting to think that it won't hold long enough for Elesis to recover."

"Maybe we should have thought about that before we rushed her into this house after she collapsed." Rose glances back. Aside from the bright speck of Ciel's white hair on the roof, the house looks worn but habitable, unlike the ruins that surround it. "Not that there was much choice."

Lu hums. "You're absolutely right." She looks up towards the sky, a serene smile gracing her features. "Ah, I hope Elesis will recover soon. I don't think Ara can take the stress much longer."

Her piercing blue gaze lands on Rose, who suddenly feels immensely scrutinized. "Or you, for that matter."

They walk on in near silence, Rose in shock and Lu skipping along the path to kick random rocks. "What do you mean?" She finally asks, at least partially in disbelief.

"You're both military." Her voice doesn't inflect upwards like it usually does; she's just stating plain fact. "You're used to following instruction because that's how the Empyrean army system works.

"Elesis was a captain in her division, so she's used to leading people," she continues, scratching under Dynamo's chin. The cat purrs contentedly from within her pocket. "That's why she naturally assumed the role of leader here. You were a weapons specialist, but you still operated mostly on instruction from higher-ranked people. Without that kind of organization, you keep finding things to keep yourself busy."

It makes sense - a bit too much sense. "How do you know all of this about military order in Empyrean?" Rose manages, baffled. "They don't usually teach that in schools."

Lu laughs sheepishly. "I, uh. My parents were kinda crazy about teaching me that kinda stuff," she says. "Plus, it came up in history tutoring pretty often, so I just kinda picked up." Her gaze is like ice. "Still, am I right?"

"Absolutely." Rose's not sure what she's supposed to take from Lu's words. Clearly there's a lot more to her seventeen years than meets the eye.

Something about Lu's story doesn't feel quite right, though - a girl from Maple, who never got to even start high school, whose overzealous parents forced her to learn much more than her youth should have allowed. Why'd she suddenly move to Elrios just months before the outbreak?

More importantly, as Rose looks over the younger girl's snowy white hair, she realizes it's entirely natural. Unlike Ciel, whose rapidly whitening hair is brought about by a combination of hair dye from the past and stress in the present, Lu's hair is entirely naturally white. Rose has seen some people who have pale hair - Eve seemed to have very pale platinum blonde hair, and Add's hair is a very pale lavender - but none as cold white as Lu's.

As diverse Maple has become in the past few years, white isn't exactly a common hair colour there. "May I ask something slightly insensitive?" She asks quietly.

Lu scoffs. "Shoot."

"Is your hair colour due to a genetic mutation, or is it inherited?" Rose asks, and immediately winces. "I'm sorry if-"

"Don't worry about it. I used to get questions like that often." Lu laughs out loud, and for all of two seconds Rose envies her little explosions of happiness. "It's a hundred percent natural. My parents both had white hair and blue eyes as well."

"But that's not native to Maple," Rose says.

"Ah, I guess you could say my parents were immigrants." Lu gives her a smile that doesn't quite reach her icy, icy eyes. "I've been to a lot of places, though. So have my folks. I went to Empyrean the summer before the outbreak, actually."

"That's cool," Rose says, and she means it. "I haven't been back in five years now. Tell me about it."

If anything, it takes the ice out of Lu's gaze.

* * *

 **A/N: if you're reading this author's note it means that a) i've conquered being able to upload while on mobile or b) i've caved in after an unsuccessful attempt or seven and have gotten one of my friends to do it for me  
**

 **so yeah this is Rose's personal segment, _Qui Vivra Verra_. it's a french expression - my favourite, actually - and it means "who lives shall see". basically the french equivalent of "time will tell". where the theme of Elesis's segment overall is unity and Add's is regret, Rose's segment has the theme of future aspirations.**

 **as for the other theme names you'll just have to see**

 **also! i've changed my profile page a little bit. i've separated all my _etudes_ /studies from my longer chaptered fics, and i've added dates of initial upload and final update (if applicable) to each one. please check it out!**

 **a friend: from what i gather, Marg is joyfully suffering in a civilized hub away from all know civilizations. being able to upload while on mobile remains unconquered.**

 **~Marg (mostly)  
**


	24. Had I (I)

Add is accosted by no less than three people on his way across the abandoned house they've taken residence in.

As he leaves the kitchen, he bumps into Rose, who looks at the bucket of wet dishcloths in his hands, and nods swiftly. "Did you use the purified water?" She asks quietly, to which Add nods. "Is she doing better?"

"She's sleeping, but I don't think her fever's broken yet," Add says. "Ara and Ain are watching over her for now. We'll probably be grounded here for the next two, three days while she recovers."

"Good." She cracks her knuckles and glances up at the ceiling. "I'm going to scout out the area, make sure it's safe."

Almost as soon as she leaves, Lu comes crashing around the corner, a frantic light in her eyes. "Ciel sniped a _huge_ one," she gasps, equal parts excited and terrified, before her eyes rest upon the cloths in Add's hands. "Oh. Sorry."

"Is it still raining?" He asks. "Wouldn't want your brother to get sick too."

"He has an umbrella," Lu offers, before her expression crumples. "God, I really feel bad for Elesis. She puts so much into looking out for all of us, and there's barely anything I can do when she actually needs me..."

For a moment, Add is at a loss for words. It's things like this that suddenly remind him that Lu, if anything, is still a child - not even a legal adult yet. Guilt hits her perhaps harder than anyone else on the team.

(Except Add himself, but no one needs to know that.)

"She wants the best for all of us," is what he finally says. "We all do, in our own ways. I think... She just needs some time to rest after having to leave her brother so abruptly. All of us do."

Lu sniffles a little bit. "Alright. If you say so." She grins just a little too brightly at him, just enough to seem strained. "I'd be like that too if I had to leave Ciel like that, honestly."

Her expression turns light and airy again. "Well, I'm gonna go bother Rose," she decides. "She looked like she could use someone to talk to."

"Wait," Add calls. "Get another umbrella. Rose said she was heading outside but I don't know if she brought one with her."

"Gotcha."

Add turns back around, shifting the bucket in his grip. He makes it about three-quarters of the way down the hallway before Ain comes stumbling out of a room, patting down his pockets like he's searching for something. His eyes light up when he see the wet towels that Add has. "Oh, excellent. Did you get the water filter working again?"

"Yeah," Add grumbles. "I don't have a degree in engineering for nothing."

"Good, good." It's odd seeing this side of the normally composed and proper Ain. His eyes are flittering around, like he's got a million things to do and no time to do them. "Give them to Ara, she's with Elesis now." He pauses. "Where are the others?"

"Ciel's on lookout. I think he's on the roof." Add isn't blind to the way Ain snaps slightly more back to reality when he mentions their teammate's name, nor is he deaf to their late night conversations on the roof when they think everyone else is asleep. "Rose said she was heading out to scout the area, but she didn't bring an umbrella, so I sent Lu to give her one."

Ain nods. "Cool. I will be back shortly. I need to take a short break." His uncomfortable expression and slightly twisted posture tell Add to move aside to let him through, so he does. "Thank you!"

Add sighs. The only way he could be disrupted now is if Ara or Ciel abandoned their posts, and he knows both of them well enough to know they'd never do that.

He knocks twice gently on the door of the room set aside for Elesis. "Come in," Ara chimes inside. Her voice is soft and lyrical, but when Add opens the door, her eyes are clearly red.

There's already a wet cloth on Elesis's forehead, a patch of snowy white against her flaming red hair and flaming red face. Ara gratefully takes a new one from the bucket and exchanges it, smoothing the edges of the cloth over either side of her face. "How's she doing?" Add asks quietly.

"She's still feverish," Ara replies, wiping the excess water off her hands with a paper towel. "Ain says she'll be fine in a few days, but..." Her voice drops to a whisper. She's scared. "Her fever hasn't broken. Between the stress and the cold, I don't know if she'll make it."

"She'll be fine," Add says, but he sounds like a broken record even to himself. "She's strong enough to pull through."

Ara let him cry on her shoulder when they had to leave his mother behind. Now, he opens his arms and lets her cry on his as her girlfriend, their leader, and beyond all their friend, lies sick and unconscious in front of them.

 _Oh,_ part of him says, like a jolt of lightning that arcs through his bones and speeds up his heart rate, _so that's what that feeling was._

* * *

 **A/N: i survived bitches**

 **thank u to the very special person who uploaded for me last week!**

 **to clarify some chronological things: this takes place just before/at the same time as the last chapter. also Elesis is running a fever because she made herself take the watch while it was raining outside**

 **also this was supposed to be posted before the last chapter but i completely blanked and put that one in doc manager instead, however this has ensured that i had a backup chapter since i got exactly half a chapter written while i was on vacation**

 **to the guest user who wanted to know about _snow or ashes_ : the epilogue will be up in late September, exactly a year after the last chapter! trust me i'm doing a weird symbolic thing**

 **~Marg**


	25. Open Skies (I)

"Ciel! You'll never guess what we found!"

Tearing his eyes away from the horizon, Ciel turns around just in time to intercept Lu's tiny form barrelling at him. "It's a working music player!" She chirps, waving the tiny device in his face. "It has so many songs on it!"

It puts a smile on his face. "I'm glad you're happy." He pats the top of her head and watches her grin light up the evening. "Is Rose with you?"

"Present." The blonde woman waves from her perch on a chunk of building a short distance away from the house. "We also found some canned vegetables and soup in the remains of the local grocery store. We brought them in."

"Thanks."

As Ciel checks his pockets for ammo and makes sure the safety on his rifle is on, Rose reaches for the garden trellis he's been using to get up and down. "I'll take the night shift," she says, even though Ciel knows she's gotten almost as little sleep as Ara and Ain. "Go get some rest. You've been on the watch for nearly an entire day now."

The wood of the trellis snaps in her grip. Ciel winces in anticipation, expecting Rose to stumble down the side of the building. Instead, she swings onto a hanging pipe with surprising grace, easily making her way onto the roof. "Don't worry," she says, before disappearing behind the chimney.

"She's right," Lu says casually, probably through a mouthful of apricots. "You should really get some sleep, Ciel-Ciel. You haven't slept since Elesis crashed."

It's not the longest shift he's taken. In the days before he took Lu in, Ciel often spent two, three days awake, unable to sleep as memories of everyone he'd lost danced through his mind. Now is no better - the thought of Elesis's jubilant grin followed by her collapsing to the ground haunts him just as much as the lingering images of Lu stumbling into the remains of his shelter, starved but determined to live.

Just this thought alone is enough to convince Ciel to give into Lu's little pleas, while he still has the time to. "Fine," he says. "But you too."

Lu pouts and turns tail to head indoors, only to stop and pull the music player out of her pocket. She doesn't have headphones, but having a music player is better than nothing. "Do you think you can get it working?" She asks hopefully, turning to him.

Ciel purses his lips and thinks. "I'm not sure," he admits. "Go sleep."

He knows how important music was to her, back then. Between cheerleading and piano lessons, rhythm and melody must have been woven into the many strands of her knowledge from a very early age.

As he wanders inside, shutting the door behind him, he spots Ain in the kitchen, sitting against one of the crumbling columns and taking a breath. He looks a little paler than earlier, save for the dark sunken circles under his eyes. Stains decorate his jacket, although they don't look like blood.

"Hey." Ciel puts his back against the wall and slides down, crouching on the ground next to Ain. "You okay?"

"No," comes the muffled reply. "Elesis has been feverish for the entire day. She should be freezing by now in comparison. She's sliding in and out of consciousness and I don't know what to do."

Ciel is quiet for a bit, thinking about the still bedridden Elesis and how everything could come crashing down around them if she doesn't make it. If the virus gets to her before she can recover. If the building housing them right now will crush them all before they get a chance to move on. "You're a paramedic," he finally says. "You have different training. You're not used to seeing patients for days and days."

It's not quite what he expected to say, nor is it anything he would have thought was appropriate to say, but Ain seems to get the sentiment. "It makes sense," he says, still sounding miserable. "Maybe I should have listened to my mother when she told me to be a family doctor instead of a paramedic."

"You learn things on the job," Ciel tells him. "Remember when Ara's hair got tangled up in the fence four months ago when we were running from the kindergartener pack?"

"I chopped off fifteen centimetres of her hair," Ain says dryly. "With a kitchen knife. I could have accidentally hit her in the spine. I could have killed her by accident."

"Yes, but you didn't," Ciel continues. "You saved her, and by extension you saved the rest of us too. Your time as a paramedic has given you those kinds of reflexes.  
"You've done all you can for now. Elesis will be able to heal on her own." He pats Ain's shoulder helpfully. "Now get some rest. You need it."

Ain nods, whispers a quiet goodnight, and then ducks his head back into his arms, curled up into a ball of black-and-white parka and matted fur and fluffy grey hair.

Ciel sighs as Ain's soft snoring begins to fill the kitchen. He knows Add is capable of passing out wherever and whenever within five minutes, but he didn't know that Ain could do it when tired enough.

Still, a kitchen isn't an appropriate place to be sleeping. He leans down and gently picks up the ball of Ain, bringing him to the slightly-rotted couch that they've laid a tarp over in the living room. Ara is fast asleep on the other side, implying that Add has probably taken up the vigil at Elesis's bedside.

Lu is curled up in a bundle in a large metal rocking chair in the corner of the room, with Dynamo nestled in her arms comfortably. Her white hair dangles over her face, in clear need of a trim. Dynamo rumbles softly when Ciel approaches, soft whiskers brushing against his hands. "Sleep well," he mumbles, to both sleeping girl and content cat, as he stoops to kiss Lu's forehead.

There's still a small space left on the couch. Ciel crashes into the tarp between Ain's feet and Ara's and exhales. Inhales again.

Exhales.

Inhales.

Exhales.

* * *

 **A/N: cool beans**

 **don't worry, she'll recover soon**

 **i'm still getting the hang of balancing course work with writing and also finishing my essay which i keep procrastinating on? i'm hoping to also finish _Black Swan_ so i can post that during november when i'm doing my personal nanowrimo**

 **the next chapter of _Nothing Personal_ will be up next week!**

 **~Marg**


	26. Moonlight on the Bed (I)

Ara finds herself knocking at the door to the one intact bedroom before she's even fully awake. She has no idea what she'll find inside, but in any case it can't be worse than her nightmares.

There's a muffled _come in_ , and then she pushes open the door to find Add sitting in the chair beside the bed. Faint rattling fills the room as he twists and plays with the faded Rubix cube they brought from his hometown. "Her fever broke three hours ago," he says quietly. "I had Ain come in to check. She woke up for about ten minutes, drank some water, went back to sleep."

Elesis is still slumbering peacefully. Her face is no longer as terribly flushed as her hair. Ara chokes back a sob of relief. "I guess that's what we get for living in the age past Tylenol," she manages, forcing herself to smile despite everything.

"It's Elesis," Add says with a snort, setting the Rubix cube on the water-worn nightstand. "She's probably only pretending to be asleep so she can plan our escape from wherever we are now."

Somehow, that gets a bark of laughter out of Ara. "I'm sorry, that was rude of me," she says, reaching out to pat his back. Is it just her imagination, or does he freeze up when she makes contact with him? "You should get some sleep. You've probably been up for nearly twenty-four hours now."

He shakes his head. "I got to sleep for a bit while you were watching over Elesis, before I came to visit you yesterday. If anything, Ciel could probably use a sleeping shift."

"Rose took the night shift. Ciel got some sleep." Everything is jumbled up; sleep still drags down her conscious mind. "God, everything is in such chaos. We've lost all our schedules, everyone is tired, we all need sleep. We're falling apart without Elesis."

She doesn't want Elesis to have to wake up to disorder and everyone falling asleep. That would only do more harm than good. "We need some sense of order," she murmurs.

Add nods. "Who got some sleep last night?"

Ara thinks for a bit, to all the other team members she found in various states of consciousness in the living room. "As far as I know, me, Lu, Ciel and Ain. You watched Elesis, Rose kept the night watch."

"Let Ciel rest for the day, he was up for ages on the watch." Ara knows this; Ciel was one of the few people she didn't see once yesterday while watching over Elesis. "If you think you're up to it, take the watch for the morning, and swap with Lu in the afternoon, or let Lu handle the morning instead. Ain needs to be in here monitoring Elesis's condition every so often, but I think we can have him scout around for the day."

"And you?" Ara asks. "Are you going to sleep?"

Add shakes his head. "I can hold on until noon, maybe," he offers with a weary grin. "Then I'll swap out with Ain. If we take shorter shifts, we can get more rest in between shifts."

It's a startlingly good plan, which prompts Ara to ask herself if he's been thinking about this all night. "I'll relay the plans," she says. "Tell us when you need to swap out, okay?"

"You don't have to," he says quickly — much too quickly. "You're Elesis's second-in-command, so ultimately you make the decisions now."

"I trust your plan, Add," Ara tells him. "It makes more sense than what I had been thinking of."

She pauses at the door. "Thank you," she says awkwardly, slowly, "for letting me cry on you last night. I should have been more composed than that."

Add gives her a strange look. "You let me cry on your shoulder when we had to leave my mother behind," he says. "It wouldn't be right if I had just turned you away, not when you've done that for me."

She takes in a shaky breath, nods, and runs off to pass along the plans.

( _In his eyes, that was longing,_ her mind tells her, as her heart pounds mercilessly on its Kevlar cage.)

* * *

 **A/N: i suddenly remembered about ten minutes ago that i haven't posted yet and i immediately rushed to get up and post**

 **the name of ara's segment comes from an ancient chinese poem but slightly modified. trust me it'll all come together in due time.**

 **elesis will be better soon. trust me i won't let her get sick again**

 **~Marg**


	27. Nirvana in Ice (I)

"Elesis is awake."

Ain nods, inhaling sharply. "I'll go check on her.

Add gives him a weary nod, and promptly walks over to the couch with the tarp and passes out on it. He's still got his backpack on. Ain barely resists the urge to laugh.

Still, the fact that Elesis is awake and lucid is good news; it means she's on her way to recovery. He pushes into the bedroom where she's now sitting up and chattering quietly to Ara. There's half a bottle of water nestled between her legs, capped lightly to avoid spillage.

"How are you feeling?" He asks.

Elesis offers a shaky smile. Her face isn't blotchy and red anymore, which is a very good sign. "Just peachy," she jokes, which is an even better sign. "My arms and legs are kinda sore from sleeping, and damn, I've had some weird-ass fever dreams."

Ara snorts. "They're called fever dreams for a reason, Ellie dear."

"Oh c'mon, my fever wasn't that high," Elesis says teasingly. "Besides, there are more important matters to worry about than me." Her gaze suddenly turns to solid steel. "Is everyone okay and uninjured?"

This is the part of Elesis that Ain fears, the Elesis that refuses to rest until all her teammates are fed and healthy and have gotten rest. They've convinced her since to let the others take over the night watch most of the time, but Elesis has the determination and stubbornness of a rampaging bull and Ain knows he cannot win an argument against her. "Everyone is alright, and no one is injured," he reports calmly. "Everyone is either rested or resting."

Ara turns to look at him now. "Is Add getting some sleep?" She asks. There's an odd hint of bitterness in her voice that Ain really can't quite put the right term to. "He made a schedule for our shifts and stuff, but he's been up for a pretty long time himself."

"I just saw him." This time, Ain can't hold back a smile. "He told me you were awake, and then fell over onto the couch and immediately fell asleep."

That gets a quiet laugh out of the three of them. "Good to know," Elesis says. "Are we running out of any supplies, food, water, uh, anything?"

Ain and Ara give her a complete report of everything, including their new discoveries and the number of zombies they've killed. A shared glance tells them to not mention Lu's issue with the failing structure of the house. Elesis, after all, will stop at nothing to relocate them immediately, and her health isn't going to support that. "So basically, you have nothing to worry about," Ain says, offering her a kind smile. "We've dealt with everything that's come up."

"Sounds fake, but okay." Elesis winks, and Ain knows instantly that she's back to her old self. "so, when are we heading back out?"

"When you recover fully," Ain says, just as Ara loudly declares "you aren't going anywhere just yet, young lady." There's a moment of silence, and then Elesis snorts again.

"Okay, you guys win." Ara raises her hand for a high five; Ain gives her one. "Let me ask a better question: how long will it take me to fully recover?"

"I'd say about two days," Ain says. "You were in what my mother calls a "recuperation coma". You slept for over twenty-four hours straight, which is medically a coma, but it was to fight off your cold. Your fever broke early this morning. Before that, you were sliding in and out of consciousness."

Elesis winces. "Yikes. All I remember was crazy dreams." She gives Ara a look. "I dreamed that my brother got married to a pineapple. A pineapple. Pardon my language, but what the fuck."

"Isn't there a movie with a character like that?" Ara muses, face rumpled into the beginning of a smile. "Ah, well, can't remember. Bottom line is that you need to rest before we head to Altera. Let us handle things for a while."

"Oh, speaking of which," Ain asks. "Why are we going to Altera?"

There's a nervous glint in Elesis's eyes, which is alarming in contrast to her bright grin. "There'll be more time to discuss that," she says, and which means either _I haven't thought of a reason yet so I need some more time to think of one_ or _the actual reason is something you guys are going to yell at me for so I'll just never answer_ in Elesis. "Now c'mon, I want to see how my team's doing."

She scrambles out of bed and out the door. The cap on the water bottle does little to stop Ain from instinctively reaching out for it. He shares a commiserating look with Ara, who sighs, smiles, and runs after her.

Ain lets out a breath of relief. Elesis is alright. No one has died on his watch.

He won't let any of them die on his watch.

* * *

 **A/N: and here we unofficially conclude this mini-arc**

 **if all goes well we should reach Altera in about three chapters, just in time for me to start posting _Black Swan_. the Altera arc will be posted at the beginning of december or after I finish updating _Black Swan_ , whichever comes faster**

 **yes, the title is a pun. it's an awful pun too**

 **hopefully i won't perish internally during nanowrimo again**

 **~Marg**


	28. Lost and Found (I)

Lu is patient.

Or at least, she thinks she is. She's watched paint dry before. She's been cleaning up her mistakes (and those of a good many other people) since she was old enough to walk. As Elesis recovers, Lu watches the house decay.

She walks around with Dynamo in one pocket and a pair of plastic gloves in the other, observing the different parts of the house as Ciel cooks and Ara paces ceaselessly across the roof. She slips on the gloves occasionally to poke at certain parts of the house. The drywall is moldy and soggy. There are a few large and rather concerning body-shaped lumps in the basement. Lu ignores them to the best of her ability and moves on to scrape samples from the rotting floorboards.

Dynamo is becoming restless, too. It's like the cat can taste the spores in the air - he pads around the first floor when he's not in her pocket, and spends more time sitting by the open window in the kitchen than before. A fine layer of green gunk starts to line his little paw beans, which Lu wipes off as quickly as she can with some napkins she finds in a cupboard.

Lu is patient, but she absolutely will not hesitate when her health and that of her friends is at stake. Every breath she takes is shuddering and airless. It might just be paranoia, but Lu has played enough first-person shooters and horror games to know that a house that smells like more than mildew is probably home to more than just mildew.

"We need to get a move on," she tells Ain worriedly, showing him the drywall and floorboards, and the lumps in the basement. "I know Elesis needs to recover, but we're going to die here if we stay any longer."

Ain purses his lips. "The house shouldn't fall if it's stayed up this long," he says. "Not trying to discredit you, I just-"

"It's not the house, dummy," she snaps. "It's the spores. We're going to suffocate from them at this rate."

Just like that, it clicks. Lu can see the gears turning in Ain's head - silly paramedic, where has all your training gone? - until he finally grabs at his jacket in frustration. "Thank you," he manages, which is more than Lu expected. "Elesis shouldn't be leaving until tomorrow at the very soonest, but I'll start giving everyone treatment for possible asthma and hypersensitivity pneumonitis immediately."

Lu nods. "And I'll get them packing up," she says, and the two of them run off in different directions, grabbing things as they go.

When did their rift start to heal? Lu still thinks Ain is an asshole, but as least he's a responsible one. Sure, he might have a bit of a flawed moral compass, but he actually cares about her friends, and possibly her as well. It's an odd feeling, because they've been at each other's throats ever since he joined the team.

She turns the corner to find Add talking quietly to Ciel, who is stirring around beans in the largest pot they have. "We gotta pack up," she informs them. "We're leaving soon. Possibly tomorrow."

Add stares at her. "Tomorrow?" He asks, stupefied.

"Yeah, tomorrow," Lu says nonchalantly. "Otherwise the spores might get to you. Oh yeah, and Ain's gonna be coming around to check y'all for farmer's lung and asthma soon, so get ready for that."

She leaves them staring in shock at her, and she can't help but giggle a little as Dynamo pops his little head out of her pocket. "Do you think I scared them?" she asks, scratching him gently along the sides of his face.

He purrs and leans into her hand. His face is so small, and Lu wonders how far she'll have to go to protect him from here on out.

The apocalypse, after all, is no place for a small housecat.

* * *

They leave at noon the next day. Rose boots up the Battering Ram, they load their gear inside, and off they go, with Rose and Elesis riding on ahead to chart out their path for the day.

Lu thinks about the mildewed house, how its drywall probably crumbles to dust even as they walk further away, until the Battering Ram is gone and far off in the distance and the last standing house in the decrepit neighbourhood falls to time and virus. She thinks about Dynamo, who is sleeping in her pocket and has eaten the last of her apricots. She thinks about the friends she's made, and the roles she's taken in the little group that's formed out of nothing. She thinks about dying, and losing her friends, and tries her hardest to not do it again.

She squeezes Ciel's hand as she passes by him. He gives her a gentle look. Surprisingly, the same sentiment is echoed by Add, who offers his own small smile. _Birds of a feather flock together_ , Lu thinks to herself.

They walk in the wake of Rose's car, following the tracks across muddy fields and through the remains of parks and neighbourhoods and town centres. Lu passes the time by playing _I Spy_ with Ara, pointing out the funny shapes that some of the fallen buildings have made, and the strange words that the now ruined signs form.

She feels spoiled, now that she's gotten so accustomed to living in an actual house again. Over the six hours that they trek across Elrios on foot, she has to teach herself to make the journey a routine again. Where has the Lu who walked eight hours and then proceeded to take the night watch gone? There's an ache in her feet before lunch and a sore bitterness in her fingers that long to reach for her stiletto blade and play around with it.

(Lu might ache to sink that blade in rotting flesh, but she isn't stupid enough to subject herself to cuts.)

There is no goal set straight ahead. Walking is the only real pattern; Lu only speaks sporadically, and only to Ciel and Ara. At sunset, they find Rose and Elesis setting up camp in a portable classroom a bit away from a high school, where it's relatively safe to stay. Elesis talks about Altera as they unpack; she draws a crude map on some lined paper and explains Eve from her brother's team gave her the inspiration to look through the now-abandoned Alteran archival system for anything on HNR-926 and its composition.

As the others snore around her, Lu lies awake in a pile of children's clothes, unable to sleep. Briefly, she entertains the thought of joining Ara on the roof, but shoots it down quickly when Add climbs out of his corner before she can.

Lu is patient.

At least, she thinks she is.

On a starless night, as her thoughts and sore limbs haunt her, Lu waits for sleep to find her.

* * *

 **A/N: so uh i got back into my crochet addiction and kept putting this off**

 **but also** **i have a bit of an idea for what i want to do with the next few arcs, what i want to develop character-wise. again, the next two chapters will be leading into the altera arc, but i'll be focusing on finishing _Black Swan_ from now on, until i can actually finish it and move onto nanowrimo**

 **until next week!**

 **~Marg**


	29. B-Side (I)

Somewhere in the suburbs on the road from Elder to Altera, Elesis Sieghart lies awake, unable to sleep, thinking about the things she's done and the bad decisions she's made and how the world is stained in gold when she finally lets herself drop back into the bittersweet void of sleep.

But this isn't her story, not now.

Somewhere in rural Ruben, racing against time, is a boy with hair of flames like hers, only three years younger, and yet with a lifetime of wisdom behind him.

Elsword Sieghart cries for his family alone. He should never have let the woman from ELIA take his parents away, and if he had, he should have at least sent Rena with them. Rena is sleeping now, but she cradles her hand as she slumbers, fingers skimming past where her pinky finger had been earlier this morning. He'd nearly lost her to the zombies; her losing a finger is so much better in comparison.

He shouldn't have let his sister go, either, but they couldn't have kept their new families together. There's so much he wants to tell her, to ask her, to say _before it's too late,_ but even her final words to him before she left seem like an echo of the past now. He doesn't know when he'll see her again, or even _if_ , but he already longs for the day he'll be able to recount his stories to her once more.

Someone touches him, and he flinches. "Sorry," Eve murmurs. Her slim fingers trail up his thigh like spiders. "I didn't want to scare you."

"It's alright." Elsword sighs. _Nothing is alright._ "I'm just a little… tense, I guess."

"You've been tense for the past five days." This time, Chung lays something over his shoulders—his scarf, the one Elsword gave him when they'd first met. "We're all a bit worried for you. It's about time you try and relax a bit."

Despite everything, Elsword can't help but smile. "Chung, I thought I told you to hold onto that scarf for yourself."

Chung gives him a grin that's equal parts cheeky and weary. "Nah, I think you look cuter in it."

Aisha emerges from the other room, bearing a mug of steaming tea. "Chung is right. We're all worried for you," she says, taking a sip of the tea before handing it to him, "and you know we can't function at our most effective when our leader is down."

"Do you need me to tickle you again?" Eve asks, poking at the crease of his thigh. Elsword yelps and recoils on contact, much to the amusement of the other three. "Clearly not. However, we will still keep you company."

And it's not that Elsword minds their company. Sometimes, when the strain of the world gets to him, it's all he can do to not physically _beg_ them to touch him, to hold him until everything stops smelling like gasoline and drowning. There are countless days when he longs to rest his head in Chung's lap, when he misses the feeling of Eve's fingertips dancing across his skin, when the ghost of Aisha's lips at the nape of his neck haunt him.

The memories dance in his heart, plucking on his emotions like guitar string and playing rich, decadent music. Eve working out the knots in his back and shoulders as she whispers dirty, dirty promises in his ear. Chung's hands on his hips as he finally lets down his guard and lets Elsword trace his form in ice and fire. Aisha slamming him against the wall and the way her mouth tastes like iron and rust and sweeter-than-life raspberries. The four of them together, an unshakeable force by day and a quartet of passion by night.

But the sinners' tango isn't what he's going to dance tonight. He needs comfort, and his lovers know that. Eve and Chung hold onto him on either side as Aisha half-settles into his lap, reaching up to brush the hair from his face. "Is Rena asleep?" He asks, because maybe Raven doesn't give two shits about their pack but Rena does, and Rena's hatred lingers longer than her forgiveness.

"She's been asleep for hours," Chung says softly. "You don't have to worry about her or Raven for now."

"Just let us hold you for now," Aisha insists.

Eve offers no verbal remark, but she lays her head on his shoulder and holds on a little closer.

Elsword sighs, but under the creases in his face, he can't help but smile as he melts into their kind embrace.

* * *

 **A/N: i think i went a bit overboard with the prose this time**

 **so yes! all the segments with Elsword's team will be called _B-Side_. if you like them a lot i'm sorry but this segment is probably gonna be the least frequent one.**

 **i really wanted to explore the odd love quadrilateral that encompasses the majority of this team in this chapter. there are imbalances in where the affection lies - for example, Elsword and Aisha's relationship is two parts heavy attraction, one part strained relationship, while Eve and Aisha share a more intellectual relationship and Chung and Aisha share their affection verbally. this makes them equally strong as a team, but also extremely fragile and prone to shattering - a glass cannon, in essence. i hope this serves as a good precursor to what you'll get to see in future chapters!**

 **as for Rena and Raven? i make no promises.**

 **~Marg**


	30. Meltdown (I)

They're forced to abandon the Battering Ram on the wrong side of the Bethagara River, which reeks of danger and dead bodies.

Around the Battering Ram, they lay their supplies out on the ground, picking only the necessities. Rose sighs wistfully as she pats the hood of the (now essentially damned) car. "It's been a good run," she says.

Ciel unloads what remains of the food and drinking water on the other side, grimacing as he tosses aside a now completely empty bottle. Everyone has their own individual bottles, thanks to the not-so empty aisles of the grocery store, but water itself is precious and they're running low on it. Their canned food is too heavy to bring for the most part, so it stays in the Battering Ram, while Ciel tucks dried food and sacks of beans and pasta in his pack.

It gets worse. Ashen frost lines the ground as they trudge towards Altera, and although everyone has clothes and shoes to wear, many of them aren't adequately clad for snow. Lu, for one, is still wearing the same sneakers she had during the Outbreak. Rose's jacket is practically falling apart at the seams, and she's constantly pulling it back together by its loose threads. Ara, who needed special orthotic shoes for her gait, has worn through almost all her socks at this point.

Elesis's "great plan for going to Altera", as she calls it, should be enough to replenish their supplies. Unlike Velder, which went up in flame because of the natural gas explosion, Altera ran entirely on electricity, generated mostly by the Bethagara Falls Dam. Although the city is abandoned, it's still entirely intact, and its notoriety as a technological hub means they have the best hope of finding well-preserved foods there.

The climax of the plan revolves around the Altera Core, a huge 12-storey shopping and office complex spanning the distance between two subway stations beneath, and two monorail stations above. A few of them have been there before for various reasons, but everyone knows the huge variety of clothes and sporting supplies available in the mall will solve all their problems at once. Afterwards, it's only a short trip through the city to break into the government facilities (which really should have broken down sometime last year, according to Add) to get any files possible on HNR-926, and then they're off to the next place that fate takes them.

It's a very Elesis plan, though, which means there's a pretty good chance she made it up on the spot and refined it internally over the next few days. Everyone has some doubts about this plan, whether they've vocalized them or not.

Especially Elesis. She paces back and forth around the Battering Ram, walking around the hood after Add and Rose pop it open, and barely smiles. Lu offers her the last scrap of apricot from her bag. She turns it down.

Adventure is Elesis's playground. She lives for the thrill. She yearns for adrenaline the way Add yearns for coffee. By all means, she should be raring to go, already on the balls of her feet and ready to spring from the starting line.

But even she is privy to fear. The whispers pass; Ara tells a story she's only heard snippets of. It's a story in which Elesis trekked alone across Elrios before she found Ara, and wandered by the banks of the electrified Bethagara River, riddled with bodies of those who were unfortunate enough to touch it. Ara thinks someone might have been with her at the time - someone who she couldn't save from the river. The flowing water, no matter how calm it may seem, haunts their fearless leader now as she stands before it, and will probably follow her for the rest of her life.

"This is heavier than I expected," Add admits, shouldering his backpack (from his college days, no less). "But I think I could outrun a walker with this."

"You can't rely on not dealing with runners," Ara says, tossing his sledgehammer over to him. "Besides, your pack cannot be heavier than mine. You're not carrying fifteen spare mags of ammo in there."

Rose snorts. "That's nothing," she says. "I have thirty, plus some for all of your firearms as well."

They all turn to Elesis, who looks mildly confused. "Gee, Elesis," Lu says, grinning, "how come your mom lets you have no guns and just a baseball bat?"

It doesn't bring back the full Elesis grin, but it's close enough for now. "Nah, that was my dad," she says. "Mum thought I should have played soccer instead. To be fair, I did. I just liked baseball better."

Her gaze moves far, far away again, as she stares out over the river. "I just wonder how we're gonna get over," she says. "The bridge is too damaged for us to get over, and there's no way I'd just drop you guys in the water and tell you to swim. If the virus doesn't get you first, then hypothermia will. That's like asking for death."

"Is it possible for us to repair the bridge with what we have here?" Ara ponders, peering over the riverbank. Elesis holds onto her sleeve, like she'll fall in and perish any second. "Looks like we can't. Ah, fuck."

"Aren't there any other bridges we can cross?" Lu asks. "Maybe, I dunno, a boat we can take?"

"There's a boat dock up ahead," Elesis points out.

Ciel frowns. "Modern boats are metal. They'll conduct electricity," he says. "Most of them have probably rusted, too."

Add snaps his fingers. "No, not all of them. Some lighter boats are made from aluminum, which is less conductive," he explains. "And a lot of them are also reinforced with fibreglass and Kevlar."

"Neither of which is conductive or can rust." Ain nods approvingly. "How far does the boat have to last us?"

"As far as I can tell, about a hundred to two hundred metres." Add squints at the far bank. "The issue is the depth of the river. The debris on the riverbed is fully capable of tearing the hull of the boat apart. We'll have to move quickly."

"Then let's start looking for an adequate vessel," Elesis says. "Ciel, please make something nice for lunch. If we're gonna die in this river, then we might as well do it with a full belly."

* * *

They barely make it over the river on the roughed up boat they find.

The boat shudders as Ciel, Elesis and Rose push off from the shore. Add pushes onto the makeshift rudder they've built, and slowly, slowly, the chunk of metal they've decided to entrust their lives to starts to follow the river's path.

"How much further can you turn the rudder towards the opposite bank?" Lu asks out loud, peering out from her perch at the bow (or at least what remains of it). "I'm not seeing any zombies, but there are rocks on the riverbed."

Ara suddenly runs to the back of the boat, towards the rudder, and throws herself on it. "Hard starboard, we're gonna-"

The bump comes before she can even finish her sentence. There's a stomach-wrenching feeling as the floor of the boat immediately begins to drop. "Shit," Elesis manages, rushing for the bow. The gash in the side of the boat is caught on the jagged rock in the middle of the river, and water is rapidly pouring into the hold. "Everyone to the bow, we need to tilt the boat away from the rock!"

The entire boat shudders on the strain of six of them at one end. "ADD!" Ara screams, beckoning wildly. "LET GO!"

He's still stuck to the rudder. "I CAN'T," he yells, "WE'RE GONNA JUST FLOAT DOWNHILL IF I DO!"

Like lightning, Lu bounds across the boat, footsteps like feather touch before she's wrenching the rudder out of Add's grip. "You're throwing off the balance," she shouts. "Go help everyone else off, I can get off last!"

Add is about to argue, but then the boat jolts, sending him flying towards the bow. Lu grunts as she holds the rudder in place, bringing the boat towards the opposite bank. Ara clutches Elesis's arm tightly. "Just hold on," Ain calls over the din of the rushing water, "just a little closer!"

Ciel is the first one to close the distance between the boat and the shore. He vaults over the railing, kicking off the side of the boat to launch himself into a somersault just off the shore. "A little closer," he yells, dusting himself off and running to catch up with the drift of the river. "It's safe now, you can jump!"

The first to react after that is Elesis. "Eh, what the hell," she says, taking a running start and dashing off the end. She lands on her feet in the rocky terrain, and only stumbles for a second before dropping her bags and immediately running back with her arms wide open. Rose follows suit closely, tripping over a rock on impact but still returning to help catch Ara, Add and Ain.

The only one left on the boat is now Lu, and she still holds onto the rudder. "LU! YOU HAVE TO JUMP!" Ciel bellows, running to keep up with the boat. "YOU'RE GOING TO GET WASHED AWAY!"

Lu purses her lips, shrugs her shoulders, and lets go of the rudder. It immediately starts going in another direction. It doesn't matter. She takes off like a bullet, getting a solid running start and launching herself in a perfect parabola through the air. The others scramble across the riverbank just in time to cushion her fall.

They fall across the rocky riverbank in a wave, some groaning from Lu's sudden impact. Dynamo crawls out of her pocket, somehow completely unscathed, and meows. "That was a bit unpleasant," Add coughs, gingerly lifting Lu's foot from his chest. "Please don't try anything like that again."

Ara isn't so lucky. She pushes Lu's foot off her stomach and immediately runs to lean over the river to throw up. "Oh my god," she gasps, "maybe lunch was a bad idea."

"Let's rest for a while before we head into the city," Ain suggests, rubbing his back and wincing. "We'll definitely get to the Core in less than an hour, so it shouldn't disrupt our schedule to take a fifteen minute break."

They all look over at Elesis, who is sprawled out over a larger rock. She blinks a few times. "Forget fifteen minutes," she says, "I think I need to nap for an hour."

The others just laugh and collapse in a heap around her.

* * *

There are thankfully few zombies in Altera's streets. Unfortunately, most of them are runners.

The skeletal remains of what once were monoliths hide many secrets. They shoulder their weapons and walk back to back when they can. Everyone is on edge and ready to shoot at even the slightest sound.

They've been charged by runners twice now already, and on neither occasion was it just a single runner. The zombies in Altera seem to operate in packs, possibly to pick off more victims at a time.

"Do you think," Ain says, holding his hatchet out like a flashlight, "that maybe these runners are former university students? It would explain why they behave like... like..."

"Grown up kindergarteners," Rose whispers, and the city goes eerily silent with the echo of her voice. Bricks crumble. An unsettling creaking starts up behind the pillar, and both Ara and Ciel point their weapons at it.

It's only thanks to this move that they manage to catch the runner as it leaps on them. Ciel brings it down with a single, soundless bullet to the head. "There are going to be more," he says in a low tone. "Be alert."

Lu swears under her breath, drawing her other pistol.

"Okay," Elesis breathes, "guys, I see the Core in my peripherals. What are the chances we can outrun these runners?"

"Not high enough." Add also swears under his breath. "Which direction?"

"Uh, to my left."

"Slightly better, then," he says. The sledgehammer in his hands is shaking.

Elesis grins. "I'll take it." Her gaze hardens, crystallizes. "On three."

A zombie leaps out at them from a shattered storefront. Rose shoots it without hesitation.

"THREE!"

Maybe in retrospect it was a bad idea to have all seven of them running across one tiny street. Lu takes the lead quickly, while Add and Ain trail behind, weapons swinging behind them. "Hurry," Elesis urges, glancing back for only a second. Everything behind them is a blur of grey and mottled, rotting green. She turns back to face forward, unable to think of the path of destruction she's leaving.

"If we can get inside the Core, we'll be safe for the time being," Ara yells, aiming forward to clear the way with a blast of her shotgun. "At least we can handle what's inside."

The Core is coming up quickly. It is circular in shape and thundering in height and width. In its heyday, it would have been the centre of a technological paradise.

Now, it is a purgatory to the souls trapped inside, and for a group of fleeing survivors, it might just become an oasis of safety for a short period of time.

"The nearest entrance is blocked," Rose shouts, pointing at the main doors under the _Entrance 6_ sign. "Who just puts half-ton chunks of concrete in front of a door?"

"Doesn't matter!" Elesis scans the area. "We still have to find a way in!"

The issue of the runners on their tail remains, though. "Which way do we go?" Ciel demands.

"Left!" Elesis yells, and the world tilts that way as they all zip across, seeking the next exit.

It's not far away, and this one only has a small boulder blocking the way. Rose and Lu tackle it with all the finesse of a pair of college linebackers, and it crumbles to dust as it leaves their hands. Add slips a tiny screwdriver from his pocket, plunges it into the electronic lock, and starts to pick it open. "We need cover fire," he warns, gritting his teeth at the door.

The runners are closing in. Ara fires a warning shot and it catches one of the nearby runners, but the others are approaching much too quickly. "Work faster," Ain says in a strangled voice. "We can't-"

The door swings open. "EVERYONE IN," Add yells, holding it wide open as everyone shuffles in. Ara fires one last shot, fending off a zombie that's getting too close for comfort, and then she too jumps in.

They slam the door tightly and hold it together as Add reconfigures the lock from the inside. The pounding and scratching on the outside grow fainter and fainter, until they stop altogether.

The survivors let out a sigh.

Only then do they notice the darkness.

* * *

 **A/N: woah is this the longer chapter to date? you bet!**

 **unfortunately this will also be my last update to this fic until possibly december, because i am completely out of reserve chapters and next monday i will start uploading _Black Swan_. yes, this is because i'm going to be devoting all my time to nanowrimo!**

 **anyways this is just a sample of the real trouble they're gonna be finding in altera. the next update, whenever it comes, is going to crank up the action to the nth degree.**

 **until then, i wish you all a great time! happy writing, and good luck to those who are taking on nanowrimo!**

 **~Marg**


	31. Meltdown (II)

"I don't like this," Lu declares, "not one bit."

The abandoned mall is dark, much too dark, even with the broken windows and flickering lights. "This is the stuff that horror movies are made of," Ain agrees, pulling his jacket around him. "We should get moving quickly."

"I can't even tell where the shops are," Ara says, squinting into the darkness. "I can barely even tell how we got in."

"Oh, that's easy," Add says, moving to the head of the group quickly. "Before my mother and I moved, we lived in Altera, so I've been here a few times before. I also came here in sophomore year with a few friends on a road trip." He grins. "I can tell where we are."

Lu snorts. "Oh yeah? What shop is that?"

"COBO Coffee," Add says, without even looking. Lu looks surprised. "What? I have a photographic memory."

"That's certainly a new fun fact," Ara says pleasantly, wandering out a few steps to kick at the remains of a bench. "Ciel, are we short on any supplies?"

"We're low on food," he reports. "Since we left most of the canned food in the Battering Ram. Also, it would be nice to have better backpacks that aren't falling apart."

"Winter jackets," Rose muses. "A ski jacket or a nice parka would be nice."

"Then let's try and find those things as fast as we can," Elesis says. "And let's try not to get split up. We have a better chance of survival that way, since it's dark and Add is the only one who knows where we are."

They all turn to Add. "Alright, Mister Photographic Memory," Ara says, "where to?"

He looks pensive. "Well, first I'd suggest we raid the coffeeshop," he says slowly, "because we have the best chance of finding bottled water there in the display cases."

"Or the worst," Lu points out. "There are signs that other survivors have been here. They could have had the same idea as us and taken everything already."

"No harm in trying, right?" Rose says, pistol already in hand in case of emergency. "If it ends here, well, please tell my family I love them if you reach Elysion."

"I'll go with you," Elesis blurts, and why did she do that? Maybe it's the terrifying concept of _if_ they reach Elysion. She unhooks her baseball bat from her belt and props it up on her shoulder. "Just in case."

She swings the bat, and it shatters the glass windows of the storefront, leaving sheets of rapidly-breaking laminate underneath. "Damn," she mutters, stepping into the wreckage with Rose as lights flicker behind them.

There are no zombies in this store; it's been locked up all this time, so nothing has been taken, either. They recover a pallet of bottled water among jugs of expired fruit juice and a fridge full of spoiled milk. "Excellent" is the verdict from Lu, exclaimed while stuffing her bag with bottles.

The system of sending a few into a store while the others stand on guard outside seems to work fairly well, even if they don't encounter any zombies. It's almost like they're strip-mining the mall for its treasures. They find a better-fitting jacket for Rose, much to Ara's amusement when the other girl thanks her profusely for lending her the original.

Food is harder to find, though. Even in a mall as high-tech as Altera Core, fresh produce cannot last three years. Elesis keeps half-expecting to see some futuristic freeze-gel refrigerator with fresh fruits still locked inside in their prime state. Add thinks for a few minutes, draws a few messy sketches in the dust on the ground with his foot, and they're off again in search of the foot court.

"Add," Ain calls, "do you think there might be a pharmacy in this mall?"

"Oh, that's something I hadn't thought about." Add thinks for a moment. "I think there's one on the way to the food court right now. Rexall, probably? Though it might have been shut down."

The Rexall in question is indeed in their path, but it's locked in complete darkness, with no nearby windows or flickering lights to help out. "I'll go in," Ain immediately says. "I'll have an easier time adjusting to the darkness because of my eye."

Ciel makes an odd noise. "I'll go as well," he says, looking around at everyone else. "My pockets aren't full yet, and there's a lot of things we still need."

"Then I'll go too," Lu decides, sniffling as she reaches for her pistol. "Dang, it smells bad in here."

The doors of the pharmacy were left half-open; someone must have been scrambling to get out. They slip through, one at a time, and give little salutes as they disappear into the pharmacy. "Well," Elesis says, looking over the dents in her baseball bat, "anything else you guys want to find?"

"I want to find a map of the mall," Rose says. "Not because I don't trust Add's memory." He immediately stops bristling. "We have very different shops in Empyrean, or at least we had, and I didn't do much shopping during my year stationed here. I would like to see the shops here."

Ara's eyebrows shoot up. "Oh! You're thinking of a directory. We can totally find one of those nearby."

Add points into the dark corridor. "There's a kiosk over there with maps, I think." He smirks. "I'm not sure they haven't disintegrated, though."

Sure enough, Rose runs down and makes it back with a map in record time. "Oh, is this an apparel store?" She asks, pointing at some part of the map. "I think my youngest sister used to enjoy this brand of clothing."

A shrill scream suddenly pierces the uncomfortable stillness of the mall. Elesis jumps to her feet, baseball bat ready. "That was Lu," she manages.

"CLEAR THE WAY!"

The glass door shatters as Ciel charges out, dragging Lu with one hand and rifle raised in the other. The muzzle is still smoking. "Where's Ain?" He immediately yells, even though he's right behind him. "We have to go. There's a mutated one in there. Huge."

"Taller than you huge?" Ara whispers.

Ciel nods. "A behemoth."

There's a crash from within the store. Even from their dark vantage point, from the dim light of the single flashlight that Ain holds, Elesis can see a gargantuan form knock over a shelf like it's a piece of cake.

Ciel is easily more than six feet tall. The literal _beast_ in the store in front of them has to be eight feet tall at the least. "Okay, maybe it doesn't see us," Elesis whispers, gripping her bat tightly between both hands. "Everyone walk away from the entrance slowly. Stay in its blind spot. _Do not run_."

The Behemoth makes a thundering grunt. Elesis winces as it begins to stagger towards the now-ruined pharmacy doors. "Okay, new plan," she says plainly, as it bashes its ugly, festering head through the wall and roars. "SCATTER!"

She grabs the nearest person - Rose - and takes off back in the way they came from. Ara grabs Add by the sleeve and they bolt off towards the food court, vanishing into the darkness behind them. Ain, Ciel and Lu follow behind Elesis, and Dynamo yowls pitifully from Lu's pocket.

Not surprisingly, the Behemoth takes off after the larger group, its thundering footsteps slow but constantly just behind them. "What do we do?" Lu shrieks, scanning the area desperately for any way to escape. "Ara and Add ran in the other direction! We can't even just leave!"

"There's a fork in the corridor up ahead," Rose yells, rifling desperately through the map. "We can split up there."

They come to the crossroads within mere seconds, and like a crashing wave, they split, Elesis and Rose down the hallway on the outer perimeter and the others into the depths of the mall.

Elesis doesn't stop running until she realizes the only footsteps she can hear are her own and Rose's. "Rose, hold on," she says, almost reluctant to stop. They match paces at a quick, silent walk. "The Behemoth didn't come after us."

"Oh lord," Rose utters. "It went after Lu, Ciel and Ain because they were the larger group. That's why it didn't run after Ara and Add."

"Fuck," Elesis growls, tears threatening her eyesight. "I've just let them die, they're going to get killed and it's my fault-"

"It is not your fault," Rose says sharply, grabbing her by the shoulders and entirely stopping them. "We're all in stranger territory, and moreover one of the most dangerous zombie hotspots in all of Elrios. We all knew we risked meeting dangerous zombies beyond prior knowledge. We're all in this together, as a team, and we do not blame you, so stop blaming yourself.

"Trust in them," she concludes, "and they will come out victorious."

"Rose," Elesis says, "have you ever considered being a public speaker?"

The other girl seems baffled by this for a second before breaking out into light laughter. "I have not," she admits, "but now that you mention it…"

"Keep that in mind when we get to Elysion," Elesis says, turning back to the path ahead of them. "Alright. Even if we don't have the full team right now, we should look for escape routes."

Rose nods. "The map says there are emergency exits placed across the mall," she says, pointing to the nearest one. "Every fifty metres or so, there is at least one way out of the mall."

As they walk, Rose reads small bits of the mall's history from the faded pamphlet. "The original Altera Core was built sixty years ago," she reports. "It actually has twelve stories, but only the first two consist of the actual shopping mall. The rest are all private offices of tech moguls such as Nasod Motors and COBO. There are five basement levels of parking, as well as several elevators to both the parking lots and the office buildings scattered across the mall."

"I heard once that the Altera Metro has two stations in the basement floor," Elesis recalls. "Because the length of the entire Altera Core was exactly the distance between the two stations."

The pamphlet confirms it. They run out of fun facts to read, so Rose goes back to pouring over the words with one hand on her pistol as Elesis tackles the blockage of the emergency exit.

"Hm." Elesis flexes her fingers and purses her lips. "Something's not right. This exit is blocked from the outside, or the door mechanism is broken, although because this Altera I really doubt the second option."

"Let's try the next one, then," Rose says, leading her into the darkness again. Elesis finds herself picking at the exact same situation, this time with Rose next to her also scratching her head in confusion. "Are they all blocked from the outside?"

"Come to think of it," Rose says, "when we entered, did we not remove a large piece of collapsed wall from the doorway?"

"I feel like you're suggesting something here," Elesis says, "but I'm not smart enough to read between the lines."

Rose shakes her head. "The doors would have been broken from the inside if they were all broken by fleeing citizens," she says. "No one "accidentally" puts a piece of brick wall over the high-tech, tempered-glass door to the biggest shopping mall in the nation."

"So someone put it there in purpose," Elesis says breathlessly. "Why?"

In the half-light of the blocked door, Rose seems ghostly pale, unnaturally so. "The brick wall isn't much to deter people from getting in," she says quietly. "We are perfect proof of that. No, the exits are blocked to keep something _in_."

* * *

"Where are we?" Ara screams, fingers curling around the hand grip of her assault rifle. "I can't see anything!"

"Just stay next to me!" Add yells, gripping her sleeve tightly. "Don't let go!"

They run in silence for a solid ten seconds, and that's more than enough for the deafening silence to stop them in their tracks. "We're the only ones running," Ara realizes, bringing them both to a scraping halt. "Add, slow down, the Behemoth is gone."

"Where are Elesis and the others?" Add demands, whirling around to squint into the darkness. "Oh no, they must have gone back towards the place we came in from."

"Great," Ara mutters. "Where are _we_?"

Add glances around the room. "Well, by the looks of it," he says, "we're in the food court. There's Phoru Bakery, and Go-Go Ramen. Their tonkotsu ramen sucks, by the way."

"Not particularly useful information, but thank you nonetheless," Ara says. "Do you want to see what we can find around here?"

They take turns shuffling through the nearby stores while the other stands guard. Ara goes into the bakery and finds another bottle of water and some freeze-dried parmesan in a sealed bag. Add comes back with some instant miso soup and unopened white rice, as well as some dried snacks from Sander. "Cool," he says, looking around as he packs them into his bag. "There's a pho place around the corner, we might be able to find soup base there."

Ara isn't sure what to look for, so Add vaults over the counter with his pistol and sledgehammer while she waits outside. There's occasionally muttering and banging of pots and pans inside, but ultimately nothing to make Ara think she's not safe.

But she doesn't feel safe. Just like Lu had said earlier, she doesn't like it, not one bit. She raises her rifle to her shoulder, squinting into the darkness as she backs up against the counter. "Add?" She says cautiously, quietly, calmly. "Something doesn't feel right."

Something moves in front of her. Without thinking, Ara presses the trigger, and the head of the zombie that had tried to jump out at her explodes in sickly green and ochre brown. "Add, we're not safe here," she shouts, rolling across the counter and checking her ammo. "I don't know how, but there are _runners_ down here!"

"Kinda busy!" There's a sickening _thwack_ , then Add comes running out of the back with his now bloodied sledgehammer at his side. "Holy fuck, there's more of them."

"You found a zombie in the kitchen?" Ara asks, breathless. "Damn, they just keep multiplying. How did they even get here?"

Add goes stiff beside her, reaching to his holster and retrieving his pistol. "How much of the room can you see right now?" He says slowly. "I don't know if you can see it, but we're basically surrounded right now."

Something shuffles in the edge of Ara's vision. Maybe it's because she's so accustomed to living in the light, but it seems to have taken much longer for her to adjust to the darkness of the mall than the others. She finally catches the runners slipping between tables, eyeballs falling out of their sockets, limbs limp and loose.

"Well, fuck," is her quietly uttered verdict.

"I don't know how much ammo you have," Add says, "but just in case we don't have enough, we can't stay here. We have to run before they get too close."

"It's like a first person shooter, except we're actually in danger," Ara mutters. "We can't stand and fight that long, so we just have to run. Cool."

"I'm lifting my sledgehammer up," Add says. "On three, we throw it at the table just off to the right of the counter, and we vault over and escape to the left, okay?"

Ara nods. "On three. One…"

"Wait!"

She turns just in time to feel Add tip her chin up and catch her lips in his. "Just in case we don't make it," he says, face flushed, "I wanted to let you know… Yeah."

"Yeah." Ara pushes down a wave of heat from the pit of her stomach. "On three. One."

"Two," Add whispers, and they grip the sledgehammer together, ready to throw.

"Three!"

The sledgehammer goes flying, and they scramble over the counter as it shatters the table into pieces, sending several nearby zombies tumbling to the ground. Ara shoulders her assault rifle and shoots blindly both forwards and backwards as Add drags her out of the fray. Sometimes the bullets plink against metal, sometimes they bury themselves in zombie bodies with rather satisfying wet noises. Ara doesn't pay them any attention and just runs, _runs_.

They make it to the other side of the food court, passing through the corridor and into a closed-off shop that Ara breaks open with a bullet to the window. "That was awful," she whispers, between cut-off breaths and gasps of air that are never enough.

Despite everything, Add still somehow finds the strength to grin, even to laugh a little. "Am I crazy if I said that it was kind of fun?" He asks. "Sue me, but I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie."

(Ara would be lying if she said she wasn't high off the adrenaline, too.)

"Maybe a little," she amends, and pulls him in for another kiss.

* * *

Ain is kind of tired of running, but he doesn't dare complain.

The Behemoth, of course, decided five snacks (six if you count Dynamo) would be better than two. Then it decided four was also better than two, and of course now Ain is part of the unlucky group that has to deal with it.

"This sucks!" Lu whisper-shouts, and Ain can't help but grunt in agreement. "I know I've said this a few times already, but this really fucking sucks!"

"Language," Ciel hisses between his teeth, but Ain knows he's just as tired. "We have to kill it somehow. We can't run forever."

"Do we have a map?" He suggests, narrowly missing a broken bench and jolting over to avoid a trashbin. "If we know the layout of the mall, we stand a better chance of being able to use the environment to our advantage."

As if on cue, a panel in the ceiling above them opens and down drops the broken form of a walker. Ciel shoots it in the face and they jump over it, hoping that the Behemoth will somehow trip and fall over it.

The main issue is the size of the Behemoth. Lu is a good runner because she has been physically trained; Ciel is a better runner because he's just tall and has long legs. The Behemoth, while not as eloquently proportioned, easily _walks_ as fast as they run because of its sheer height. Even though its footstops are nowhere as frantic as Lu's, the Behemoth is constantly on their tail, roaring as it plows through broken kiosks and rotting benches.

"Kiosk!" Lu yells, and they split across the hallway, crossing the darkness to swerve around it. For a second, Ain runs alone in nothingness, rejoining the others on the other side. Lu seems to have picked up a map along the way, unfurling it as her bag bumps behind her and Dynamo wails in her pocket.

"Anything useful?" Ciel calls, glancing back at the Behemoth thundering behind them. "We're losing vantage!"

"I have an idea, but it's not gonna be easy," Lu yells. "Hold the Behemoth down at the next intersection. Don't get killed!"

With that, she suddenly puts on a burst of speed, turning a sharp corner and disappearing into darkness. Ain nearly gets his head swiped off as he slows down to stare. "Ain! Get out of the way!" Ciel bellows, raising his rifle and shooting a bullet into the Behemoth's arm.

Prior to his departure from Elysion, Ain had theorized with his mother on the fraying of nerve endings in zombies. _They're fully capable of movement_ , she'd said, _so the real question is, are they capable of feeling pain?_

Ain had said yes, because surely it made sense that they would. He'd seen people in accidents who'd lost use of a limb, and could no longer feel anything in that arm. Many zombies lack feet, or hands, or limbs, which could explain why they move so slowly - without that familiar feeling of that particular limb, movement could be slowed significantly.

In the present, however, Ain ducks as the number one proof against his hypothesis virtually _absorbs_ the shot and _roars_ , barely even acknowledging the bullet now lodged in its shoulder. He hits the deck and manages to roll out of the way before he gets stepped on. The bottles of vaccine in his bag slosh around, and he can only pray they haven't been crushed under his weight.

"Lu said to keep it at the intersection," he gasps, reaching into the bottle pocket of his bag behind him. Somehow he's managed to cram a bottle of water in there, along with the hatchet that usually stays there. He quietly extracts it, wielding it in both hands tightly. "Let's keep it there."

The Behemoth swings a fist at him. He sinks the hatchet blade in its hand, causing a wave of unnatural stink to pour out of the wound. On the other side, Ciel aims quickly and puts a bullet through its neck, causing it to bat at its own neck like a mosquito has bitten it.

Something skids across the floor. Ain gasps as a flickering calico tail disappears from between the legs of the Behemoth. "Dynamo!" He yells.

It instantly gets the attention of the Behemoth. It roars again, and Ain tenses and prepares to leap aside to avoid another blow.

Instead, the Behemoth surges forwards and stumbles before it can take a full step. In the lightless corridor, Ain catches the sight of a bungee cord wrapped around its foot and tied to a nearby bench, just before Lu jumps off the bench and lands on its back. "Sayonara, motherfucker!" She yells, and Ain can only make out the outline of her silvery knife before she digs her fingers into the rotting flesh of the Behemoth's face and plunges it into its eye.

A guttural scream pierces the stillness of the mall. Lu wrenches her knife out of the bloody eye socket, flinging gore and rotting flesh across the floor. She pulls the Behemoth's head back and -

Ain looks aside as the screaming stops. The huge body thumps to the ground, and Lu jumps off, landing delicately on her feet. "Dynamo," she says, a little desperately, looking around.

Sure enough, the cat mews from its shelter behind the bench. Lu sobs, dropping the knife and shedding her bloody gloves. "Oh my god, you brilliant cat, I knew that feeding you would be a good idea!"

"Lu," Ciel calls, voice choked. "Wh-what happened?"

She sniffles, even with Dynamo cradled in her arms. Ain inwardly winces at the _germs, so many germs._ "On the way here, Ara was telling me about an old movie she used to like," she says. "They caught a villain by tripping him and jumping on him from behind. I saw the bench which I could jump off, and I saw a sports supply store on the other side, so I ran and got bungee cord, and…" Her voice trails off, the adrenaline of the hunt finally draining away. "I'm glad you're both safe."

Ain freezes. It sure is odd that Lu is thinking of him, but then again, it could definitely be a spur of the moment thing. Still, nothing deters Ciel from rushing forward and clutching Lu to him like a lifeline, trembling in every limb.

"... Ciel," Lu says, softly, and he finally lets go of her. "It's alright. We're all safe."

"We're not safe yet." Ciel turns to Ain, beckoning him over. "Lu, do you still have your map?"

She pulls it out of her pocket along with some spare gloves, setting Dynamo back in immediately afterwards. "The whole complex is huge," she whispers, holding it out as Ain shoves his hatchet back in his bag and rifles for a flashlight. Ciel looks around nervously, ready to catch any other zombies that might stumble upon them. "I don't know where zombies might be lurking."

"Maybe instead of looking for where zombies are, we should look where they aren't," Ain suggests. "The food court is bound to be full of zombies because there must have been a lot of people in it when the outbreak happened."

"Oh yeah, the worst of the outbreak started just before noon," Lu recalls, "so that leaves all the corridors as potential danger zones. Although, it was a Wednesday, so I'm not sure if people actually came for lunch..."

"Are there empty stores that could be safe hiding spaces?" Ciel asks. "Anything that closed down shortly before the outbreak?"

Ain shakes his head. "Read the fun facts on the pamphlets," he says. "The mall replaces all closed stores overnight. It was an urban legend when I was doing my residency training."

"Okay, so that leaves us with three kinds of stores: those that we can't break into, those that we can, and those that are already full of zombies," Lu decides. "Some stores we can't break into because their windows are all glass, and if we break them then someone's gonna have to stay awake to watch the hole in the glass, and as good of a guard Ciel is, I think he deserves some sleep."

Ciel grunts in reply.

"Anything useful on the second floor?" Ain asks, unfurling the map. "Or the office levels?"

"The second floor has a few restaurants, so we might want to check them for food," Lu says. "But aside from that, nothing that'll benefit us right now. We can't even get to the office levels - they're connected to the surrounding buildings by overpass bridges. We'd have to hack into those buildings to get to the upper floors."

"We don't have to get to an upper floor," Ciel suddenly says. "How many levels of basement parking are there?"

Lu glares at the map in the half light. "Five," she reports.

"Then that's perfect." Ciel turns around for a second to point towards a point on the map not too far from them. "That's the access to the parking lot. We can take the stairs down to the fifth layer."

He takes one last look at the map before starting to walk away, rifle still ready to be fired at any moment. "Wait," Ain says, tossing the map back together with Lu. "Why the fifth layer?"

"The parking lot system," Ciel says. "The fifth layer doesn't open until the fourth fills up, and the fourth doesn't open until the third fills up, and so on and so forth. We have the greatest chance of surviving the night in the fifth layer if the outbreak was on a Wednesday, because that minimizes the chances of the first four parking lots being filled up."

He glances into the darkness. Ain follows his gaze and lets his thoughts wander. Up ahead, further along the lifeless corridor, there seems to be nothing but dust and the ruins of an technological paradise. "And, if our friends are smart enough," he says, "we'll find them there, too."

* * *

 **A/N: and, ladies and gentlemen and nobles of every house, we are back!**

 **it's been real fun writing _Black Swan_ , especially after I've been planning it for so long, but _When the Winter Ends_ is rapidly approaching its first anniversary, and I'd like to get the show back on the road!**

 **this chapter has been in the reserves since september, and I've been holding onto it since! thankfully I've had the time to refine it and the details that lead up to the next one since then. the _Meltdown_ arc really begins what I hope is the most tense, most suspenseful section of the story. you heard it first here, folks, it's only getting worse from here on out.**

 **I actually wrote this after a period of plot stagnation, when I had to pass through a very dark parking lot under a large mall downtown. yes, that mall does span the distance between two subway stations. the parking lot is terrifying. the system for the parking lot is inspired by an outlet mall in the suburbs that I've been to.**

 **ah, it feels good to be back. I've had a pretty shitty week, and an even shittier day, so posting has really been the highlight of my day!**

 **~Marg**


	32. Meltdown (III)

As it turns out, Rose and Elesis are the last ones to reach P5.

Add was the first to remember the parking system, and hacked his way in with Ara after they escaped the food court and its runners. He's somehow lost his sledgehammer along the way. Rose studies them from a distance as they unpack the water and rice they found, not making eye contact, not speaking a word, flinching when they come in physical contact, and decides that _something_ must have happened.

Ciel's group turned up victorious against the Behemoth, and Lu tells a very intense story of how she "defeated the evil" with Dynamo. Ain smiles serenely, corrects the parts Lu overexaggerates, and looks queasy when Lu describes killing the Behemoth. Ciel himself looks a little shaken, and falls asleep in a corner soon after Rose and Elesis show up.

Half the reason why they took so long to show up in the first place was because they spent so long in a sports supply store, picking out a new jacket for Elesis. For some reason, Elesis insisted on trying on every jacket they could get their hands on, sashaying it off to Rose even though neither of them could actually see the colour. Rose laughs as they come into the dim light of everyone's flashlights; the jacket was red and black all along, classic for Elesis.

The other half the reason is their almost tragic inability to find an entrance to the parking lot. They had tried to get in through the north wing, but the door was blocked by a collection of ceiling panels and skeletal bodies. It had taken a full hour for them to reach the south wing, where they'd found signs that their friends had already made it down.

As they pull parkas and winter hats and gloves out of their bags, Ara leaps to her feet and runs over to tackle Elesis in a warm hug. "Don't ever do that again," she snaps, voice trembling, and Rose can't help but feel a twinge of jealousy. "Do you know how scared I was? That you'd _die_?"

On the other side of the room, Add looks stricken. Rose decides that whatever happened must have been big. She's going to have to interrogate Add about it later.

"We're all fine now, aren't we?" Elesis flashes a grin; Rose briefly wishes it were directed at her. "I'm sorry I panicked, but everyone's safe and the Behemoth is gone, so everything is alright. Everyone is just fine."

Elesis is talking in circles again, which means she must be exhausted. Ara seems to notice this too, and quietly ushers her to the corner where Ciel is passed out on top of a tarp and some bags.

Rose brings the clothing items to the others, distributing each piece as they see fit. Ain replaces his gray and white coat for a darker one with turquoise highlights. Lu trades her blue one for a navy parka with equally large pockets (and several more on the inside, presumably for more snacks). Add gingerly plucks up a black beanie and a puffy purple jacket, which he slides on over his existing jacket. "It's cold," he argues when Rose gives him a bemused look.

"I know." She looks up. "Do you think we can rewire the lights with the battery from the Battering Ram?"

Ain makes a choked noise. "You brought a _car battery_?"

"Only a segment of it." Rose sets her bag on the floor and rifles through it. "Electric cars have many battery cells. It makes them easier to replace if and when they break down. I chose to bring the smallest one along with the corresponding solar panel."

She hoists the battery out, setting it on the floor. It beeps as it turns on, showing a full four bars of electricity left. "And because we walked in sunlight the whole time before we came here," she continues, "we have more than enough electricity to power up this room for quite some time."

Lu laughs out loud and claps excitedly, running over to look at the sleek battery cell. "Now we can have light!" She says happily, as Add rolls to his feet and reaches for his screwdrivers. "Add, go fix the lights!"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm on it," he grumbles, but Rose can easily see how happy he is as well to have light again.

She brings the battery over, and they crack open the junction box by hitting the lock. It falls apart instantly, allowing them to pry the box open and start tugging at the wires inside.

"So," Rose mumbles, quietly, so that Ara can't hear. She's talking to Lu at the moment, which is reassuring because Lu talks louder than anyone else on the team. "What happened between you two?"

Add doesn't respond for a while, just sorts out the wires and tugs on the clips holding them down. Rose has never thought of wiring as therapeutic, but it must be that way to Add, because he finally seems a little less distressed. "I kissed Ara," he finally offers.

Rose nearly chokes on thin air.

"And she kissed me back, a bit later," he continues.

"You WHAT?!"

Everyone looks up at her sudden outburst. Ciel lifts his head sleepily, only to fall back down. "Relax, it's just a sledgehammer," Add says quickly, eyes wide in that _play along_ way. "I'll pick up more weapons along the way."

"You're an idiot," Rose grumbles, smacking him in the back of the head. She used to do this to Vera and Cora, and Edna on occasion. "See if I give you my sisterly advice ever again."

Add wrinkles his nose at her. Somehow it still suspiciously reminds her of Cora. "Yeah, right."

It's a very new development, if a development at all. Rose has known all along that Add has been attached to Ara since their little bunch crashed into his town. It might have something to do with the way they met, considering Elesis's recountings of the story. It's somehow not surprising to her that this fondness turned into attraction.

(But then again, what would it mean for her and her fondness?)

They talk about the possible weapons that they've seen along the way, and Lu eventually pops over to tell them about the sports store she raided for bungee cords. "The sledgehammer is like a battle axe," she says in a very scientific manner. "Because you have literally no upper arm strength, the balance is totally off. The gravity of the hammerhead will drag you down."

"That's all cool and good, but why do you know so much about medieval weapons and balance?" Rose asks.

Lu shrugs. "My physics tutor was a history geek," she supplies. "Anyways, because you have noodle arms, you have to wield a sturdier weapon that isn't as heavy on one end. The sledgehammer might have been useful for breaking down doors, but it slowed you down too much in the face of danger.

"Now, I don't think you want to start wielding a crossbow anytime soon," she continues, "but there were a variety of ski poles in the sports equipment store. Those are light and really sturdy and very strong. They're made from the stuff that baseball bats are made of."

They all glance towards Elesis, who is now fast asleep and snoring softly. Her fingers curl lightly around her baseball bat. She looks peaceful. "So that's always an option," she says. "The other option is garden shears."

"Aren't those super heavy, though?" Rose asks. "Or am I thinking of the wrong thing?"

"They are pretty heavy, but the balance isn't nearly as awful as the sledgehammer. They're basically giant scissors." Lu's smile suddenly turns into something positively _diabolical_. "You ever break a pair of scissors in half?"

Rose glares at her. "You've broken scissors in half on purpose before?"

"Well, it's kinda hard to break scissors _by accident_ , isn't it?" Lu shakes her head and mimes a pair of snapping scissors with her fingers. "If you break a pair of garden shears in half, sharpen up the edges a bit, you've got yourself a pair of fine machetes."

Ain wanders over, hands still preoccupied with the notebook he's scribbling in. "I believe I would like to join in on this as well," he admits. Rose blinks. Ain has never played anything but the pacifist before. "Although my hatchet is useful, it isn't very… Useful, so to speak. I struggled to even keep _myself_ safe against the Behemoth. I hope that doesn't happen again."

Rose can hear the desperation behind it - the need to keep everyone else safe, the dread of failing to do so because he can't even save himself. She sees it so clearly because she knows she suffers just the same. "We'll get you something better than a hatchet," she says. "Do you want to take some notes on what we have and what we're short on?"

He dips his head kindly. "Yes, but please do turn the lights on. It is rather dark for note-taking."

Rose looks around the camp they've made. A few cars, probably belonging to employees, scattered across the lot. A pile of bags laid on a single worn-out tarp in a corner. The team leader, passed out in the corner. Somehow, the disorder of the situation is comforting. "That is something we should get to. Yeah."

Add grunts, plugs the wires to the battery cell, and flicks the switch on. Their little corner of the parking lot lights up - the first light they've seen in hours, and the first light this mall has seen in years. "Success!" Lu cheers, as Rose blinks away the haze in her vision and Ain smiles. "Now we can actually see things!"

Sure, it's just a little bit of light, but with just this, it's as if the whole world is suddenly alive and alight once more. Their lives instantly become warmer, brighter. Rose inhales and exhales deeply, feeling like the dust is clearing out of her lungs. Everything feels _safe_.

"I'll keep watch for a bit," Lu says, slipping on her new gloves and tossing a strip of beef jerky to Dynamo, who gobbles it up instantly. "Darn, we couldn't even find proper cat food, or even _dog_ food for Dynamo. Oh well. I'm sure my brother will make us something to eat once he wakes up." She stretches her arms languidly over her head. "Besides, I'm still kinda on an adrenaline high. I won't be getting any sleep for a few hours."

"I'll get up to take a shift in a bit," Rose assures her, but the younger girl just shushes her and pushes her gently towards the sleeping pile. "Lu, I'm serious. You can't expect me to sleep all night when you had the hardest time on that boat we were crossing."

"Pfft, don't worry about that." Lu flashes her another of her terrifying grins, the ones that are ninety percent ice and ten percent teeth. "I've been through worse."

Conceding herself to her fate, Rose just dips her head and moves away.

It's at times like this that she misses her old jacket, the one that Ara gave her. While the new one is impossibly soft and warm, she misses the comforting hug of the old jacket, and the worn pockets. She settles for tucking her fingers into the faded sweater paws, curling up in the fetal position next to Elesis and blinking away the light.

She tries, but she never quite settles into sleep. Ciel shudders awake with a gasp, and is immediately met with both Ain and Lu, who assure him of their presences quietly until the panic fades and he's able to switch in for the watch. Ara sleeps in a huddled bunch, occasionally mumbling her distress, until her nightmares pass too.

Something rustles. Rose dares to open her eyes just a bit, and spots Elesis in her peripherals. She's sitting up, glancing over the parking lot. Then, without a word, she gets up soundlessly, padding across the ground with all the grace and stealth of a shadow. She's able to slip out the main door just before Ciel looks away from his cooking pot.

Rose opens her eyes fully. The battery is silently blipping along. Ara and Lu are curled up in a ball together, Ara seemingly shielding Lu with her body from some unknown evil. Ciel is stirring their dinner with a hot pink spatula they liberated from a kitchen store. He looks barely rested, but nods at Rose when he sees her scoop up Elesis's baseball bat and run after their leader.

There's a gentle _krrch_ sound when she pushes open the door, although Elesis doesn't seem to notice it. "Hey," Rose says quietly, which finally gets her attention. The sound echoes down the empty corridor. "I brought your baseball bat."

"I thought you were asleep," Elesis says, accepting her bat. Rose's fingers linger on hers for a moment too long before she pulls them away again.

"I couldn't sleep, but I did rest." She offers a smile. "My mother called it _drifting on the border_. I feel rested, don't worry."

"Good." Elesis stares out into the subway tunnel on the other side of the corridor again. Her eyes, while still fiery and red, have taken on that glossy sheen again, the one she has whenever her thoughts are travelling faster than she is. "I was thinking about what you said, about how the doors are blocked to keep something in."

Rose exhales. "You don't think it was the Behemoth, don't you," she says.

"Of course not. If Ain was able to go up against the Behemoth—" Elesis barks out a laugh. "—Ain, our team's black sheep in terms of actual fighting? Poor guy's probably never taken even a self defense course in his life. If even _Ain_ was able to go up against the Behemoth, regardless of how much support he had, and emerge unscathed, then there's no way the Behemoth was what they were trying to trap."

The sour feeling in Rose's stomach makes it do a backflip. She thinks it's a mixture of anxiety and confirmation. She's not sure at this point. "So there's something worse," she says, whispers.

Her voice carries down the corridor in a sinister echo. Rose swallows down the thought of _something worse, something worse, something worse_ , and forces herself to speak above it. "What do you think it is?" she asks, already reaching for her pistols. _Down, girl_ , she tells herself mentally. "A whole pack of Behemoths?"

"No, not quite," Elesis says. "The Behemoth was more like, like a college linebacker. You ever watch Elrian football?"

"Um." Rose has seen the men in her division play. It's not a pretty sport. "Kinda. Perhaps the Behemoth was an athlete?"

"A student athlete," Elesis mutters, before snapping back to attention. "Anyways. I think we really dodged a bullet tonight, Rose. Between the Behemoth and Ara's bullet spraying, we left behind a bunch of bodies. Otherwise, we'd be dead in this very parking lot."

Rose's blood goes cold instantly. "Elesis, what do you mean?"

"Come with me."

They trek up the staircase in relative silence, climbing the five flights of stairs wordlessly, emerging at the south entrance. Elesis dives into a nearby fishing supply store and emerges quickly with head lights and a massive fishing net. "Alright, Rosie-Posie," she says, and in the brief few seconds before their lights come on Rose is glad that Elesis can't see her blush, "we're gonna bag ourselves a zombie."

Even with the head lights, the hallways are eerily dark and not in the least welcoming. Dust clouds rise up wherever they step, back to back, ready to shoot at any moment. Rose shoulders her half of the net and gulps.

It doesn't feel safe.

They finally come across their intended prey: a kindergartener, separated from its pack or family or whatever, wandering the halls alone. It makes sounds that might have once been the words of a child or babbling. Rose couldn't care less. They lure the toddler over, into the net, and wrap it up tightly so that it can't touch either of them.

"This next part is probably more dangerous," Elesis says as they're walking back down to the basement, carrying the zombie between them, "so uh, if you wanna back out, now's the time to do so."

Rose shakes her head. "You're our leader," she says grimly. "I have to keep you alive."

The stairwell echoes with the sound of their descent. The zombie creaks and groans. Rose barely breathes.

Ciel is still cooking when they return to the basement. At first, he seems alarmed at the grotesque mass of nets and zombie they're holding, but then Elesis purses her lips and shushes, and he makes the motion of _my lips are sealed_ and turns away. The scent of hot beans and rice are a welcome relief from the festering smell of the zombie, if anything.

"Now, this might be really, really dangerous," Elesis says, finally letting the zombie down. It stumbles a few steps before tripping on the net and falling on its own face, crying out in pitiful creaks. "I stole some jerky from Lu's stash. And a handful of trail mix, if that doesn't work. We're gonna pry open the door to the subway, just enough to let the kindergartener out." She gestures grandly at said door. "If my hypothesis is correct, we might just be able to see what's really behind the doors of the Altera Core."

Rose shrugs, and pretends she's not practically shaking with fear. "Lead the way."

The door is easy to open, even without a crowbar. A little too easy, in her opinion. There are scuffed marks along the base of the door that it rolls into when they push it aside. In a flash of inspiration, Elesis tosses the trail mix out into the subway, chocolate chips and all. The cascade of almonds and cashews rattles down the ever-silent subway tunnel, bringing noise to it for the first time in years.

It's quiet. Too quiet, in fact. The only sounds she can hear are her own breathing, and the little _screes_ of the kindergartener as it wobbles out past the glass doors.

As soon as it's out, Elesis slams herself against the door and shuts it tight. "Watch," she whispers, turning off her head light and beckoning Rose over.

Even in the darkness of the lifeless subway station, Rose can barely breathe. She watches as the zombie stoops to pick up a stray chocolate chip, babbling happily, and then, in the nick of an eye—

"Where did it go?" she whispers in horror, even as Elesis points down the other side of the station to the ruins of the subway station. The dark masses are already ripping through the soft zombie flesh, tearing it apart with their teeth. Nearby lies the skeletal remains of what might have once been the Behemoth. "Are those—"

"Mutated Velder bloodhounds," Elesis confirms. "One of my mentors during military college was a former police officer. I got to meet one of these guys during training." She drops her gaze, and Rose is suddenly hit with the realization that Elesis is _afraid_. "Still have the scars to tell the tale."

They watch, mesmerized, as the bloodhounds rip out mouthfuls of spongy, rotting flesh, growling in pleasure as they feast. There's a faint snarl, and the bloodhounds part to allow a smaller one with a faded ( _blood-rusted_ , Rose's mind insists) blue collar to step forwards and eat its fill. The leader simply _crunches_ through bone, although with the rotten state of the zombie, it shouldn't be too hard. Regardless, Rose's stomach twists.

"Let's leave them alone for now," Elesis whispers, slowly dropping the rest of the net silently on the floor. "I don't know if they saw us or not, but I'm really hoping they didn't."

Without another word, they run back down the corridor, footsteps never once quite crashing into echoes. Elesis pushes open the door, and for a moment Rose is half expecting to see a bloodhound tearing into the prone forms of their friends, but then the comforting smell of rice and beans reaches her again, and she's finally able to relax.

"So what do we do?" she asks, lowering her voice as so to not terrify Ciel, who's still cooking wordlessly. "How did you realize there were bloodhounds?"

Elesis grimaces. "The types of stores that were broken into helped," she says. "One was a pet store. Velder bloodhounds know what they're looking for. They're smarter than most people give them credit for. We were just lucky that Ciel's group was able to kill the Behemoth. They had a good meal, which is why they didn't target us.

"The fact that Lu wasn't able to find any pet food for Dynamo kinda cemented it. Plus, I don't know if you noticed, but we actually passed by the place where the Behemoth died. The body was _gone_ , but there were bloody paw prints across the ground." Elesis shakes her head. "But yeah, long story short, we're in very, very deep shit right now."

They plop themselves down on a relatively clean bench to finally, _finally_ take a breath. "We could go about this two ways," Rose muses. "One, we tell the others. Alert them to the presence of the bloodhounds, we move in and out faster, kill a few zombies for them, stay out of their way."

"And possibly throw them all into a panic," Elesis mumbles, "and get all of us killed, and disappoint my brother, and my parents."

"Or," Rose says, holding up a finger, and Elesis looks up. "Or, we could _not_ tell them. At all. There's an elevator that goes to all the floors, including the basement. If we could somehow, just _somehow_ rig it to crush the bloodhounds to death—I mean, I got a good look at the control panel. I could rewire it." She's on autopilot mode now, but she doesn't care. The more she says, the more of a plan she comes up with. "We rewire it, lure the bloodhounds into the elevator, crush them to death. No one has to deal with them ever again, and we're basically safe to move across the Core."

The two of them settle into silence again. Rose considers her options, which are basically to run, and to sit down and face her bad decisions. Neither sounds particularly good for her heart at this moment.

Elesis looks up, and Rose is surprised to find a grin on the other girl's face. "I like your style," she says.

Rose can't help but smile in response.

* * *

 **A/N: wow my week got shittier and shittier and i nearly forgot to post this because i was too busy reading the orange papers... again**

 **but yes this is where all my convoluted thinking has come into place to build a rather impossible escape! i've run on with a lot of ideas before but this one is probably the worst offender of "possibly impossible". but then again, playing with the impossible seems to be my forte. oh well**

 **i'm seeking out some actual help, so hopefully next week will be a happier one!**

 **~Marg**


	33. Meltdown (IV)

Elesis wakes him up in the morning, long after he's curled up beside Lu to close his weary eyes. "We reheated your rice and beans," she says, and _oh no_ , the excitement in her eyes _screams_ trouble. "Grab yourself a bite to eat before Ara gets it all."

Ciel rolls up into a sitting position, his heavy coat falling across his legs. He doesn't remember much of his shift from last night, save for the fact that Elesis and Rose left in tandem sometime, and that shortly after they returned, they told him to rest. He's getting soft; between that nap and the one before, he must have slept for the majority of last night. There are fabric crease lines imprinted into his bony face, which he rubs gingerly until the creases fade to pink. It takes just a second more to pull the medical mask from his pocket and pull it on.

Around him, the others are already awake and alive. Ain is cleaning up the tarps laid out on the floor, humming an old hymn as he dusts them off before folding them. He nods once cordially as Ciel climbs to his feet and scrambles to scoop a small portion of last night's rice and beans from the pot. Ara, as per tradition, takes the rest gratefully.

"Alright, so I have a _plan_ ," Elesis says, or rather announces. "It's a great plan. I know this because I made it. Also because I actually thought this one through."

(This is almost certainly untrue. When Elesis makes good plans, it's because she speaks to someone about them. Rose was up with her; Ciel prepares to attribute this to her.)

Add and Lu put down their servings of breakfast to slow clap in unison. "Yes, yes, thank you," Elesis says, feigning a curtsey. "Anyhoo. Ain made a list of the supplies that we need to compile before we leave the Core, which, _wow_ there's a whole lotta things we gotta get. So I've split the objectives among us to locate and report back here."

She bites her lip nervously. "Might as well get the hard part over first," she says. "Lu."

Ciel's blood freezes instantly.

"I know our buddy system exists for a reason, but I need you to do something alone, and it might be dangerous, but I'm pretty sure you're the only one who can pull it off." She gestures at a loose panel in the ceiling, just overhead. "There's a pretty darn good chance that goes through a vent system. If you can climb up there, you can get into the fourth parking lot and steal a car."

Lu narrows her eyes, not in suspicion, but in concentration. Ciel has seen that look on her before; the drive to not only survive but _live_ and tell the tale afterwards. He doesn't like it. "Alright. Why?"

"Because we're gonna need it as a hub and a safe place to keep everything else afterwards." Elesis turns around. "Add, Rose: how much juice does the battery still have?"

"We're looking at three-quarters full," Add reports. "Should last a thirty-minute car ride, maybe more."

Elesis beams. "Great. Because w—the parking lot above us is barely occupied. There's about ten, fifteen cars in there, and at least two of them are electric."

That sets off warning flags immediately. How does Elesis know about the cars in the parking lot above? Ciel thinks back to Elesis and Rose sneaking out during his watch, to them scrambling out of the subway system like Death was on their heels, and decides that Rose is absolutely involved in this scheme one way or another.

"Elesis," Ara starts to say, but then their leader flits around in a hush-hush kind of motion and they prepare to listen once more.

"The rest of us, we have individual missions. Or at least team missions." Elesis glances around pensively. "Ciel with Ain, because the two of you have a grasp of where you're headed to, probably. Ara with Add because I trust you to not to get lost looking for something we haven't passed by before. I'll be going with Rose."

Ciel wonders if she notices the changes in Rose's expression as the other girl stands just behind her. It's like Rose is trying to mask off one emotion with another, cycling through fear, then anger, then stoic nothingness. For a moment, her lips twitch upwards with beatific joy, and then it's gone again.

"Right now, while Lu gets us a car, the rest of us are going hunting," Elesis explains. "Specifically, your two groups are going weapon hunting first. Ain, that hatchet is way too short to be of any good use aside from chopping wood. Add, I respect that the sledgehammer sacrifice got you and Ara back to us in one piece, but please. Don't do that again. It's dumb to leave yourself without a weapon.

"Once you're done finding new weapons, we have other things to cover. Ara really needs new socks, and if you can find an orthopaedic shop then please, _do not hesitate_ to raid it. Ain, I trust that you know what you're looking for in a pharmacy. Stay safe, and watch each other's backs.

"Rose and I will start on another objective: looking for canteens. As much as the plastic water bottles are great, now that we don't have the Battering Ram with us, we can't carry a whole pallet of them around with us all the time. After that, we're going to find the hunting store, see if we can get some more flashlights, some better backpacks, a better propane stove, and replace everything we need to replace."

She glances at everyone, with the quiet scrutiny of any military leader. "We'll debrief again after everyone returns," she says with certainty. "There's a phase two after we gather all our supplies from phase one and leave them all in the car. Oh, speaking of which, Lu, I gotta warn you about a few things before you go. After we reconvene, Lu'll join Ciel's group, I guess, since you guys move really, really fast anyhow." One final glance; Ciel catches her crimson gaze as it scans over him. "Everyone ready?"

"That's probably the most big words you've ever used in a debriefing," Add mutters, but he gives her the thumbs up and rises to his feet.

"Excellent." Elesis claps her hands together and grins. "Alright, team, let's make this happen!"

Ciel manages to catch Lu's arm for just a second before she runs off to debrief with Elesis. "Stay safe," he says. "Come back in one piece."

"I will. No need to worry." Lu flashes a brilliant, childish grin. "You're talking to the Behemoth slayer. There's nothing I can't handle."

" _Lu? You coming?"_

"Yeah, I'll be there in a sec!" She pats him on the shoulder, even though she has to reach up to do it. "Don't worry, Ciel. I won't be in any danger."

As she leaves again, it takes Ciel much too long to get the afterimage of another young girl out of his mind.

* * *

"What kind of weapon do you want?"

Ain's eyes are glossy in the dark of the corridor. The only sound in their little bubble is that of their breathing and Ain nervously drumming his fingers on the grip of his hatchet. "I don't know," he admits finally. "I've never had to fight before."

It strikes Ciel as odd that Ain wasn't trained in self-defence, at the very least, before his departure from Elysion and ELIA. There's no way Doctor Ishmael would have let her only son leave the safety of Nirvana for an apocalyptic wasteland without any training. "Have you learned any hand-to-hand?" he presses, lightly. _No need to scare him_.

"I was mostly trained in evasive maneuvers," Ain says, but there's an odd edge to his voice that says more. "I have always been better at escaping than holding my ground. It's how I ended up stumbling across you and others, actually."

"Hmm." Ciel pushes at an odd lump with his rifle; it doesn't move, so he kicks it aside and moves on. "It's never a bad time to start."

The mall never feels alive, but Ciel doesn't feel alone. That's a dumb thing to think, given that Ain is literally walking right beside him, but he doesn't feel _alone_. The bubbling of growing dread in his stomach keeps him on his toes constantly, exposed to even the slightest sound. A pebble grinds under his shoe and he nearly shoots it out of paranoia.

Something feels very, very wrong.

"Do you get the feeling we're being followed?" Ain whispers. The corridor echoes with the sound of his breathing. "Maybe it's because we were being chased by the Behemoth yesterday, but it… doesn't feel right to be walking here."

"I know." Ciel looks up ahead. There's no light, but he thinks he can see a decrepit home supply store up ahead. "Don't run. Just walk. Calmly."

He lays one foot ahead of the other, peeling his steps up to lay them down again. Smoothly. Soundlessly. Ain does the same, although his stance starts to curl up defensively.

He's scared.

They both are.

The store echoes hauntingly when Ciel pushes open the door with a screech. Ain slips through quickly, and Ciel follows, the both of the pushing the door shut together. "Alright," Ain says, gripping his hatchet like a lifeline, "what are we looking for?"

"Lu suggested garden shears." A pang of guilt hits him in the chest. "We'll find those in the side, probably."

Ain studies them as they shuffle through the aisles and step over coils of electrical wire and boxes of Christmas lights. "You're worried," he says observingly. "But not overwhelmingly so. Why?"

"Define _overwhelmingly_."

"How you used to be. When she left the base to scout after Elesis fell ill, and you practically had a panic attack." Even in the dark, Ciel can tell that Ain is giving him a particularly pointed look. "So why?"

Ciel scoffs. "I trust Lu to come back in one piece," he says. "Doesn't mean I'm any less scared for her."

"Yeah, but it used to be a different kind of _scared for her_." Ain picks up a pair of pruning shears. "Do these work?"

"Blades are too small." He puts them back and they move on. "What do you mean, different?"

"I mean, the panic attack was just one example, but you used to be more… protective of her. Worried whenever she did anything on her own." Ain rifles through a rack of disintegrating hoses and comes up with a pair of gloves. "I think yesterday shook you a lot. You and I both, we've realized that Lu isn't just a child anymore. She's independent now. She has been for a while. I think it just took until she felled the Behemoth for you to accept it."

"Huh."

( _you're talking to the Behemoth slayer. there's nothing I can't handle!_ )

They make their way through the store, testing various garden shears for strength and stability. Brandes don't matter anymore, but individual blades have turned out unstable or broken and had to be set aside for trash. Ciel gingerly takes the central bolt out of another pair with a thick screwdriver and hands the blades to Ain, who swings them around uneasily.

"Well?" he asks, arm propped up on his knee.

Ain sets his hatchet down and swings one blade hesitantly at a cardboard box. The blade sinks a solid four inches in, and the handle holds steady. "I think these are good," he says weakly, and then tenses and goes still.

"Ain," Ciel says, "what's wrong?"

In the half-dark of the womb that the home supply store has become, Ain's eyes have glazed over again. "Look through the window," he whispers, pointing shakily with one blade. "What are those things out there?"

Ciel follows his direction, and his blood chills. Something is prowling outside, like a block of massive, hulking flesh, not quite built like the Behemoth but draped like curtains of skin and blood over a liquid frame. "We can't leave this store now," he whispers, dropping slowly into a crouch. "Not until we know it's safe for certain out there."

Something screams at the back of his mind; the animalistic sound of a young girl aged fourteen being torn apart by zombies. He swallows them down and keeps looking forwards. "Ain," he says, "we need to get back."

"They'll hear us," Ain replies. "We're trapped until they leave. What can we do?"

Ciel glances around. The store seems, for the most part, unoccupied save for the two of them. He moves between the aisles one more time, and finds them entirely clear of zombies—no hidden Behemoths in the back. "We gear up, and make methods of distracting them," he says. "Add did just that when he threw the sledgehammer. I don't know if it's runners out there, but if it's zombies, they'll react to sound. All we need to do is be more quiet."

"What about the pharmacy supplies?" Ain asks.

"Screw that." Ciel reaches for a nearby coil of nylon rope; it somehow hasn't disintegrated yet. "Getting back to that basement in one piece is our priority right now. You can't fight. I'm responsible for getting you back to safety and alive." He pauses. "I want to be able to see my sister again, alright? I am not going to die here."

Ain inhales, exhales. "Alright," he says. "Let's survive this together."

(And yet, which sister did he mean?)

* * *

 **A/N: productivity? zero. mental health? better!**

 **sometimes the best fun in writing this fic is the interactions. sometimes it's writing the action scenes, even the ridiculous ones. sometimes it's planning out ways to make everyone suffer. this chapter is a combination of all three.**

 **don't worry, they make it back to the basement in one piece. it's too early to be taking anyone off the main cast, after all.**

 **~Marg**


	34. Meltdown (V)

If Add had to describe the feeling of walking through the abandoned mall with Ara, it would be "the morning after a one-night stand".

That said, he's never had a one-night stand, so he can't exactly say for certain, but the sentiment still stands. It's awkward. It's tense. He continues to mentally beat himself up as they shuffle down the dark hallways.

 _It's your fault_ , his mind reminds him. _She has a loving relationship, and if it falls apart, it's your fault._

Somehow, the little voice in there sounds like his father. He swallows it down and keeps moving on.

"I'm sorry for having to drag you out here," Ara suddenly says. "I, um. My orthotics are dumb."

"No, don't apologize." Great. So the awkwardness is mutual, too. "I have to get something new to arm myself with, anyways." He trains his gaze on the darkness ahead of them—anything to take his attention off her. "I was thinking we could find a sports store, grab some ski poles, and I could sharpen the ends with a file."

"Yeah." Her voice sounds hoarse, like she's been screaming for hours. "That sounds okay."

( _It's your fault, it's your fault, it's your fault_ —)

Finding a sports store is easy enough, because the few big chains hadn't moved at all during the few years before the Outbreak. He searches the back of his memory and leads them to a store in the easter end, avoiding the food court as much as possible on the way there. Digging through it in relative darkness isn't bad either, although Ara does have to pick off a few zombies along the way. They select a pair of black aluminum ski poles with fully-intact rubber grips.

As Add disassembles the packaging from his seat on the disintegrating seat, Ara stands guard over them both, assault rifle held tightly in her hands. Something buzzes and clicks in the air, and it's not the tension. He tears at the plastic wrapping, and feels like his chest is clogged with something unpleasant. It might be shame. He's not sure anymore.

"Alright," he murmurs, standing up, "I think that's the last of the packaging. We should be able to find a dollar store with files just up ahead."

For good measure, he rips the baskets off the poles. One comes off smoothly, but the other takes a bit more work. He yanks, and it flies out of his hand with a _pop_ and clatters to the ground below.

They freeze.

Time condenses into a moment as he looks up to face Ara in horror. Her eyes, golden as they are, shine a dim vermillion in the dark of the void. He can't begin to fathom what his look like. "I think we're safe," she whispers, taking her finger off the trigger and letting her arm fall to her side. "Let's go, quickly."

They move as silently as they can from then on, practically dancing on their toes through the corridors. There are stains on the floor, but barely any bodies, which is odd; usually they go hand in hand. Add steps over a fallen booth, looks up, and pulls Ara into the storefront.

It's not a proper orthotic store, but Add knows that this shoe store sells shoe inserts in many shapes and sizes, made of plenty of different materials. There's also a fruitful collection of padded socks, and shoes are always a bonus.

This, he realizes, is the climate of the apocalypse: they've resorted to becoming practically petty thieves, taking whatever they please in the absence of proper security. Then again, there's very little chance the security will be back to have them arrested. He plucks a shoebox out of a stack and opens it. There's a pair of sturdy hiking boots inside, although a bit large for him. He swaps them for another box and tries the new pair on. They're snug and comfortable, so he just yanks the tags off and keeps them on.

"You doing okay?" he asks, wandering over to Ara. She's struggling with her shoes a bit, and Add has never had the heart to ask why. "Do you need some help with those?"

"No, I can—" she yanks on the shoe again, but it's clear the angle at which she's sitting isn't doing her any favours. "Just give me a bit."

"I've got it." He drops down into a crouch, tugging lightly on her laces to loosen them up a bit more. She's still wearing the same snow boots she's had since they met, and it's clear why as he tries to tug them off. "You got the other one off okay?"

"Yeah." She looks sheepish.

He works quickly after that, pulling out the laces in succession until they come entirely loose. Ara finally slips her foot out, not without some more struggling. "I'm sorry," she murmurs, pulling her foot free. "You don't have to see this if you don't want to."

Her socks are horribly worn through, and beyond that, Add can see the high arch that must plague her. "I was born with one foot turned inwards," Ara explains. "Physiotherapy fixed that when I was really little, but I've always had trouble finding fitting shoes because of the arch. Won't pass through the ankle."

"Hey," Add says quietly, "it's not your fault."

Ara looks up at him, like she's surprised, and for a moment he's scared that no one's ever told her this, or worse yet, they've told her the opposite all her life, but he continues. "Fashion is dumb," he says, a little bluntly, "so if shoe designers keep making boots with ridiculously tight ankles, then they can go fuck themselves. No one wants to wear tight shoes, anyways." He hops to his feet. "Let's find some comfortable shoes for you."

They do find comfortable shoes for her, in the form of hiking boots not unlike his. They pick a slightly larger size, so that there's enough space for her insoles and the thick socks she likes best. She gives them a test run by jogging a silent lap around the store, then giving him the double thumbs up. "They're comfortable," she says, then pauses. "Thank you."

"No problem," he mumbles.

The walk to the dollar store returns them to the sad silence of before. Add finds his set of files quickly in the back while Ara prowls each aisle in search of other supplies. He rips the package apart, shoves the finer files in his pockets, and starts to shave off the plastic on the tips of the poles. It's not quick or neat, but in a few minutes he's got something that could actually function as a weapon.

Briefly, he remembers Herbaon from his second year physics class laughing at his poor assembly of an apparatus. "Your friction is going to be off the charts if you do that," he'd said. "Here, let me do it."

Add grits his teeth and scrapes the file so hard against the pole that it actually gives off a shower of sparks. He yelps at the sudden light and hits the floor with a _thud_.

"Add?" Ara's there, rounding the corner with her assault rifle in hand and ready to shoot. "Oh, thank god you're not hurt." She offers him a hand. "What happened?"

"I accidentally filed too hard, and it made a spark shower." He takes her hand and boosts himself to his feet. "Thanks. I'm okay. Just a bit sore."

"As long as you're okay." Ara glances around. "The store is clear, we closed the door on the way in, and there's a lot of supplies, so I think it's safe for us to stay here for a while."

She's brought flashlights, and bottled water, and a bag of dried fruit snacks that aren't due to expire for another thirteen years. They crack open another package of files and sit side by side on some random plastic stools, filing down the tips until they're sharp and deadly and flawlessly smooth.

"Do you ever think about what'll happen after we escape this hell?" Ara asks, pushing her file down the side of the pole with a rattling _shrrrk_. "Like, what do you expect to do once we get out of here?"

Add blinks. "Um." He really hadn't expected to outlast the virus, if he's honest with himself. "I wasn't expecting to survive that long, especially after my mom… Yeah." He looks down at his file, which is worn and practically flattened. He swaps it out for one of a finer grit from his pocket. "Why'd you ask?"

Ara smiles to herself, but it looks so pitifully sad that Add can't help but look away. "I saw a shelf full of expired sports drinks—you know, _Complete Recovery Potion_ and those kinds—and I've never had one of those in my life." She barks out a bitter laugh. "And by the look of things, I'll never be able to try one in my life."

Her focus flies far, far away. "I want to survive," she says quietly. "I want to be able to live through this, and use my history degree for _something_ , and I want to start a family and be able to live like my parents did. I want my kids to be able to live their childhoods like I did. Is that too much to ask? Is this—" she gestures wildly at the mess of the store around them— "cruel enough that it'll take away even my hopes of all of that?"

Add stares at the filing in his hands. He's started to file his gloves, completely missing the pole. He makes the readjustment and keeps filing. "When I was younger," he says, "I wanted to move to Empyrean."

Ara looks at him funny. "Why?" she asks, tilting her head to one side with curiosity. "Is it because of the culture?"

"Not really. I read an article about the science centre in the capital when I was ten, and I was obsessed with going there someday." He sighs. "I saved up money in a phoru bank for three years, but we had some… hard times. Rent and stuff stacked up, we had to use the money to pay for all of it, and it wasn't until I was out of high school until I'd realized that the dream kinda… died."

"If it's any consolation," Ara says, "my brother's been there." She reaches into her coat pocket, where Add knows she keeps her favourite trinkets, and pulls out a faded keychain. It has the name _Aren Haan_ carved into the wooden surface, which has since lost its shine. "He said it was really cool." She tosses the keychain to Add, who manages to catch it between his hand and the file. "He got that piece of wood laser-cut there."

"That's really cool."

They test the tips of the poles by jabbing them into aluminum foil. They sink in with little to no pressure and a solid _crunch_ as they pierce through the pie tin. "Well, time to head back," Add says, taking one last look around the store. They've filled their bags with food and water and extra socks, as well as a fair number of flashlights and miscellaneous supplies. "You ready to go?"

Ara visibly brightens up. "Yeah," she says, shouldering her bag.

His heart aches as she walks up ahead. In the pit of his stomach, he _knows_ that his feelings for Ara aren't going away. The kiss from yesterday—both of them—are proof of that. It's become something much darker than just, say, a summer romance, or a fling that barely lasts two days. It's become a plague that has haunted him since they left the town he grew up in.

But he knows he can't act now, not when she's clearly happy with what she has. He'll wait until she's ready to take his hand, or when she's ready to turn him down completely. He's ready to deal with the repercussions, either way. It's never a good idea to fall in love during the zombie apocalypse, after all.

For now, he's glad they've re-established these walls. As he falls back into pace beside her, they feel like friends, allies, nothing more. Nothing awkward to it.

Add hopes it'll stay that way.

* * *

 **A/N: so instead of writing today (which was a "snow day") i spent my evening cooking curry and miso soup, and then reading hollow knight meta fanfic**

 **this chapter was brought to you by GaIn's Paradise Lost, which is a fantastic song even though the music video is definitely not something i would show my sister**

 **also please remember to wear comfortable shoes this winter, especially if you live in an icy area like me! lots of socks are cool but don't cram your feet into your shoes because you want them to be warm!**

 **Ara's childhood foot condition is called club foot, and it occurs occasionally in newborns where one or both feet are turned inwards. it can be fixed with physiotherapy or surgically tho**

 **~Marg**


	35. Meltdown (VI)

If there's anything Lu isn't afraid of, it's the dark.

Dynamo purrs comfortingly in her pocket, but she doesn't need it. A few well-placed swings of her stiletto blade, a well-timed pistol whip, and when worst comes to worst, a few bullets are what keeps her out of trouble. The few zombies in the fourth basement fall at her feet like a curtain of flesh. Dynamo offers an appreciative mewl.

"Thank you, thank you," she says offhand to the cat. Fortunately, cats don't really care for sarcasm, or at least Dynamo doesn't. She wipes the blood on her stiletto blade onto a felled zombie's rotting clothes and sticks it back into its space in her sleeve.

Except it nearly slips out again. Lu bites a swear under her breath as she remembers she's got a new jacket now. The sleeves don't have the little sheath that she made in her old jacket, unfortunately. The parka, as warm as it is, doesn't feel like home yet.

Another thing Lu envies about Dynamo: the ability to sleep literally everywhere. The cat has already made his home in her largest pocket, and has claimed it as his own. She shakes her head with a smile and turns back to the task at hand.

The fourth parking lot is structured a lot like the fifth, except it's significantly less empty. Unlike the fifth, which is barren save for their little corner, the fourth parking lot is occupied with a sparse few cars, most of which are parked slightly crooked. Lu squints at the nearest one with an ounce of doubt and sighs. She backs up for all of two metres before dashing at it at full speed and making full contact of her foot to the window.

Nothing happens. Dynamo shrieks in surprise and discomfort; Lu offers him a consolation pat, which he accepts begrudgingly. Cats, as she's discovered, are surprisingly easy to please. All they want is warm pockets and food and face scritches from kind owners, which she can provide easily.

Car windows, on the other hand, are a lot harder to break into. She doesn't know if the cars here are as well-equipped with anti-theft functions as the ones in Empyrean, but given that Altera has always been known as the technological capital of Elrios, it's safe to say she shouldn't be tampering with the locks. The windows are made from bulletproof glass, though, and if she shattered one, wouldn't that make it harder to defend their precious supplies?

Gritting her teeth, Lu moves away from this car and finds the next one. It, too, is locked. She pounds on the window, nearly breaks her fingers prying open the back trunk, and even tries to open the hood. Nothing works.

She glances around again. Even though it's dark, her eyes have adjusted well to the lack of light. She literally only needs _one_ car to work for Elesis's crazy plan to work out, just _one_ functioning car that she can hack and slash her way into. She takes a third sweep of the room, groans, and looks back at the one at hand.

It's an older car, judging by the keypad lock system. There's definitely no time to be scavenging for lost car keys since the others will be returning soon, so Lu kneels down, lets Dynamo out of her pocket to be her lookout, and starts prying the keypad off with her stiletto. She digs into the handle, lifting the brittle plastic, and wedges her fingers in before extracting her stiletto blade. "Here goes," she mutters, and slams the butt of her pistol into it.

The impact shatters the plastic easily, but leaves a chasm of blossoming pain over Lu's fingers where the worst of the force had been directed. She yelps, both plastic and pistol clattering to the ground as she curls up around her hand, whimpering. Dynamo bounds over and yowls at her in concern.

"It's alright, Dynamo," she whispers, her voice suddenly very, very small as she tries to pat his little head. "We got the lock off. I'll be okay."

Dynamo kneads her fingers helpfully. Every movement sends shockwaves of pain through her hand.

 _Damn it, Luciela, why couldn't you have thought things through before you acted?_ The voice that yells at her while pain blurs her vision sounds suspiciously like her mother. _How are you supposed to act as a role model for your brother if you can't even act as a role model for your peers? What kind of leader do you want to be? What kind of leader_ can _you be if you're incompetent? No daughter of mine should be as thoughtless as some common queen bee._

"Shut the fuck up, Mother," Lu growls. Dynamo yelps and scurries under the car, and the pain is immediately replaced by guilt. "Oh, Dynamo, you poor thing, come here."

She pats him down soothingly, apologetically, trying her best not to curl her fingers at all. If anything, the memories hurt more than her hand. She picks her pistol back up with her good hand—thankfully, her dominant right hand—and holsters it and her stiletto blade properly. She's only just getting started with the car, after all.

The rest is a lot simpler: she breaks the rest of the keypad off just by lifting it, exposing the wiring beneath. Alteran cars have long battery lives, and this one still has just enough juice for her to open it up and mess with some wires. While it's not easy with just one hand, she manages to work with it, pinching things with her relatively unhurt thumb and her swelling index finger. A few minutes later, with Dynamo still prowling around her feet like a little sentinel, the car lights flood the darkness, sending the cat scampering, and the telltale _beepbeep_ of the car system tells her she's won.

"Suck on that, Mother," she says, and swings open the door.

The car probably belonged to a suburban family of about four; Lu spots a sports bag of ice skates when she opens the back trunk, along with a box full of emergency provisions like cans of soup that she can bring back. "We scored big on this one, Dynamo," she says excitedly, rifling through the trunk. Sure, the entire car smells like rotten eggs, but she can always get an air freshener for that, right? There's blankets in the back. A towel that she can use to mop Dynamo down, at long last. _Spare batteries_. She doesn't even need to use to the one from the Battering Ram!

Then the light blows out, and the car makes an audible whirring noise as its power source dies. "Whoops," Lu giggles, hefting the spare car battery out of the trunk. It's heavy, and she doesn't want to drop it on Dynamo in the darkness, so she puts it back in the trunk and bends down to put the cat in her hood first. "Alright, let's go."

Installing the new battery is also simple. She presses a mechanical button from the driver's seat, and the hood pops open for her to expose. There's more stuff stored in the front trunk, including a whole pallet of water, but she pushes it aside and opens the layer underneath. From there, she lifts out the old battery and lets the new one settle in.

The car rumbles to life again. Lu almost claps in glee before she winces from the pain.

"Now to start it up," she murmurs, slipping into the driver's seat and slamming the door shut. Just as Rose taught her, she reaches under the steering wheel and feels around until she finds the panel that opens when she presses it. The emergency startup button is just a click away after that.

Thank god Elrian technology is so user friendly.

Before she buckles herself in, though, she looks around one last time, and runs around back to the trunk. There's a roll of duct tape back there, and better yet, a pair of flat plastic shovels. She breaks off the handles with her good hand before using them and the duct tape to split her bad hand. It's messy work, and it's definitely not painless, but when she gets back into the driver's seat, she feels like she can grip the steering wheel a little less painfully.

"Alright," Lu says, exhaling. "Seatbelt." She reaches for the seatbelt; the strap crumbles in her grip. "Oh well. Check the seat." As Rose told her, there's a little slider at the side of her seat, which she messes around with until she can comfortably switch between the gas pedal and the brake pedal. Serves her right for being 4'8", she supposes.

She presses the ignition. The engine coughs and hacks its way to life, which is better than she'd expected, honestly. "Alrighty." She pushes the gear to _Drive_. "Let's go."

This is how Luciela Rowena Sourcream, age 17, manages to crash a car on her first attempt driving: she grossly underestimates how sensitive the gas pedal is, and fucking _floors it_ , causing her rickety vehicle from fifteen years ago to lurch forwards at the speed of a rampaging cheetah and hit a nearby car with all the associated force.

The dust settles. Dynamo yowls in complaint. "Whoops," Lu says sheepishly, switching gears to _Reverse_ and backing up gently. With a bit of gentle navigation and very delicate steering, she's able to drive all the way out of the parking lot, down the ramp, and to the door that leads to the fifth parking lot. It's not easy, but she does it.

 _Hah. Take that._ She does a little happy dance, and pumps her fist in the air. Dynamo purrs his approval.

The door shifts, sending up a plume of dust, and Lu startles. "Are Elesis and Rose back already…?" she murmurs, one hand on Dynamo's back to calm the cat down. Sure enough, standing at the junction box by the door is Rose, thumb jammed into the button that manually raises the door. "Rose! You guys are back already!"

Rose nods wisely. "That, we are," she says, face lit up in ghostly pink and gold in the headlights. "Our mission was probably easier than everyone else's because our destination was a lot closer, and we knew where we were going." She smiles. "But hey, we found new backpacks."

As soon as the door rises all the way, Lu steps a little on the gas, causing the car to lurch forwards a bit more. Rose raises an eyebrow as the wheels drag the car body into the fifth parking lot. "Ahahaha," Lu manages, "I'm, uh, a new driver?"

"Your battery part won't last that long if you keep doing that," Rose says, exasperated.

"I'm not even using the battery part you gave me!"

Elesis greets them excitedly over by the pile of their existing supplies, which has grown since Lu climbed up the vent shaft. "Oh my god, what happened to your hand?" she asks, worry lining her face as Lu climbs out of the car. "Did a zombie do this?"

"No, I was just dumb." A flash of pain; she sets it aside and puts on a smile. "It's just a bruise. I'll recover soon enough."

They start to load things into the new car, which is a pitiful replacement for the Battering Ram and its maximized storage space. Rose grimaces at the layer of dust on it that now clouds their corner, but it's better than nothing.

Ara and Add return first, armed with new boots, fruit snacks, and a better mental map of the safe locations in the mall. They seem a lot more comfortable speaking to each other now, which is significantly better than last night. Lu wonders if it was just their experience with the runners in the food court that shook them, or if it was the incident that she overheard of while Add was talking to Rose. Either way, the basement floor gets a lot livelier. Ara shows off her new boots and thick socks, and promises to bring Lu to the store where she got them.

It takes a lot longer for Ciel and Ain to return, though. Lu finds herself looking back at the door to the mall upstairs, even though it remains dark. She occupies herself with bandaging her hand and helping Rose move things into the new car. She snags a bag of dried apples and pears, since someone seems to have taken her jerky and a handful of her trail mix. She pops a pear slice in her mouth while Dynamo nibbles a chunk from his nest in her pocket. "Verdict?"

The cat purrs happily. Lu smiles and gives him another one.

The doors open suddenly, and Ciel and Ain come running out, shutting the door swiftly behind them. Ciel scans the basement; Lu meets his gaze with a smile. "Oh, Lu, you're okay," he says, voice choked, as he runs to wrap her in a hug. Dynamo mewls defiantly as he gets lightly squished, but it's alright, _it's alright_ , Ciel is here and he's alive and well.

"You didn't run into any zombies?" Ciel asks. He sounds almost fragile in the moment, on the verge of shattering. "Didn't get hurt?"

Lu manages a short laugh. "Well. I did run into zombies, but I killed them before they could get to me. And I did get hurt, but that was because I was a dumbass, not because of the zombies." She shows his her bandaged hand with only a single dramatic flounce. "It's a little bruised, but nothing that won't heal."

Ciel nods weakly.

"We ran into some really terrifying things." Ain is shaking where he's standing against the wall with his arms wrapped around his middle. "I don't know what it was, or if it was anything at all, but there was something prowling in the hallway outside." He shudders." It was like a _mountain_ of flesh."

Elesis purses her lips. "Actually, now that you mention it," she says, "the Behemoth's body wasn't there when we passed by the sports store where you guys took it down. Do you think it could be still alive?"

"It would explain the shape," Ain agrees. "It was constantly rippling as it moved. We got back here because we speedwalked."

"Good choice," Ara mutters. "Things that run are meant to be chased."

Lu watches as Elesis and Rose exchange a look. "Anyone kill any other zombies on your way through the mall?" she asks. "Anything, even a kindergartener?"

Ciel goes tense before relaxing again, and Lu has to look up to face him. "Ciel?"

"It's nothing," he says. "I just remembered… The body of the Behemoth _was_ gone when we saw it."

"Alright, so we may be dealing with the Behemoth part two," Elesis concludes, thumping her baseball bat on the ground. It rings hollowly, echoing through the parking lot. "So we'll just have to be extra, extra careful." She stares everyone in the eye. "If we go separately, we won't have the element of surprise on our side anymore. But we'll need to split into teams to maximize our coverage of the mall if we want to get out of here by today."

The risk hangs in the air. Whatever's out there, it's spooked the others. Ara and Add came out untouched; Ciel and Ain are visibly shaken. Elesis has her jaw set like she's going to beat something up, but there's fear in the way her fist trembles. Rose won't meet anyone's eyes.

But they can't stay here, not when something prowls outside. The faster they haul ass out of Altera, the better. Lu stands up straight in Ciel's arms and pumps her fist. "Come on, guys," she says, channeling all of her latent _optimistic 17-year old_ energy that she keeps hidden for these moments. "We're gonna survive, alright? Even if the Behemoth is still alive and bumping, I killed it once and I'll kill it again."

It's not much, but it gets a smile onto Elesis's face. "Right," she says, folding her knees in and out to stretch. "Alright, lads, we all know what we're looking for. Let's get to it."

When Ciel finally lets go of Lu, he gives her a look, before moving over to where Ain is still shivering by the wall. As Lu watches, slightly mesmerized, they speak in quiet tones, likely a reassurance of some sort, before her brother pulls them into a hug. She thinks she hears a choked sob.

She turns away, not daring to watch any longer. It feels like she's intruding on a quiet moment that isn't meant for the eyes of an outsider.

They set out after Rose and Add deem the car strong enough to hold their things, though Rose looks at the wrinkled front of the car with disdain and a turned-up nose. Lu slips her stiletto into her sleeve and grips her pistol in her good hand before picking a new backpack out of the pile. This one is black and white with faded blue accents. She slips it over her parka and runs to get Ciel to adjust the straps for her.

"Is Ain okay?" she asks as Ciel kneels at her side, tugging on the backpack straps and fixing the velcro. "He looks kinda scared."

"He is," Ciel says, and looks like he wants to say something else. "Do you want to leave Dynamo here, just in case?"

"Nah." She reaches into her pocket with her bandaged hand; Dynamo's little head comes up, rumbling with his purrs, to meet it. "Can't slay the Behemoth without my trusted sidekick."

The team meets at the staircase a few minutes later, each carrying a new backpack to carry their new supplies. "Ready?" Elesis asks. "Let's all come back alive."

Oh, alive she can do. Lu is a survivor, after all.

(But maybe, just maybe, after seeing how haunted Ciel looks, she might be a little bit afraid of the dark.)

* * *

 **A/N: i am so sorry for the late update, guys. last week was hell with schoolwork, and this week being march break i lost track of time and forgot to upload because i drew pokespe characters for 6 hours straight.**

 **but i suppose being fashionably late means i got to work a bit more on this chapter! it's always fun to integrate Lu lore into fics because she's got a very interesting background. in this fic, she'll be dealing with a lot of her past, and trying to put it behind her. not that it's gonna be easy, of course.**

 **her fingers aren't broken, btw, just very bruised and swollen! the impact of the pistol butt + plastic hit her hand pretty hard, but she'll recover soon, i'm sure of it!**

 **~Marg**


	36. Meltdown (VII)

"Let's come back alive."

 _At what point did my standards drop so low?_ Elesis wonders, pushing herself up the flights of stairs with the others behind her. At the back of the group, there's quiet whispers, but she ignores them for the most part, pretending she can't hear them.

Ara squeezes her hand supportively, and she squeezes back in appreciation, offering a small smile. The stairwell is still dark, but Ara's eyes are still bright and her love still shines through them. "This isn't the end," she says softly. "We're all going to make it back, and we're gonna win, y'know?"

"I have faith in all of you," Elesis replies, but her thoughts are elsewhere.

Ciel's group is the first to break off, leaving in the direction of the closest shoe store. For good reason, too; Lu's snow boots are badly worn through, as much as she refuses to admit so. Even she's visibly on edge, even though she's probably the only one who doesn't understand how dire the situation is. She's bandaged her stiletto blade to her bad hand, allowing her to wield it even without having to curl her fingers.

Ara and Add separate from them a little bit later, heading back towards the place where they entered, or maybe even the food court. Ara offers Elesis a kind kiss on the cheek before she too disappears into the nothingness of the corridors. The voiceless patters of her feet and Add's speak volumes.

As soon as they're out of earshot, Elesis turns to Rose. "Well?" she asks, a grin on her face. "Ready to take out the trash?"

Rose rolls her eyes. "You're crazy. Let's go."

"Oh, you know it."

* * *

"And stay dead," Ara growls, yanking on the coat hanger with all her strength. With a stomach-curdling _riiip_ , the zombie's head tears clean off, splattering blood across the tiles of the clothing store. "God. The _nerve_ of these things," she spits. "I hope they rot in hell."

"They probably don't have nerves anymore," Add offers, probably not picking up on her anger, "but hey, do what you must to make them stay dead."

It's upsetting. She doesn't think she's _jealous_ , per se, but it is a bit painful to see her girlfriend _conspire_ with someone else and not speak a word of it to her. It's obvious that when Elesis woke up last night, she and Rose got up to some sort of planning - and Ciel probably knows a thing or two about it.

(She asked the poor guy about it. All he said was "they had a kindergartener with them", which, in retrospect, is even more terrifying.)

What kind of danger is Elesis getting into without her? Didn't they agree to be partners in crime, always watching each other's backs? Ara feels... hurt, at best, and betrayed, at worst.

After all, there's nothing quite like the sinking feeling of abandonment that scares you the most.

And it doesn't help at all that she's been _de facto_ paired with Add for this mission. She really doesn't want to hurt his feelings or anything, but he's terribly unprepared for combat and inexperienced with his new killer ski poles. Sure, they're sturdy weapons, but watching him flash them against the zombies is just as painful to look at as his face.

She doesn't want to acknowledge the kiss(es), and neither does he. That's okay with her. They don't need to continue down that particular path. She has her girlfriend, and he has his dreams of going to Empyrean. They don't mash well together in that sense, and so Ara thinks it's okay to play pretend and forget this one time.

But it's not fair that the adrenaline took over, to her or to him, because she doesn't _know_ if she wants to pursue something with him or keep the precious, precious closeness between her and Elesis. In the crossroads she's standing at, everything is covered in mist and her shoes are stuck in the mud. It sucks.

"You okay?" Add suddenly asks, and even though his voice is very quiet it jolts her out of her thoughts. "You've been kinda silent for a while."

She can't really help that the laugh that follows is almost forced, just because of how _bitter_ it is. "My girlfriend is clearly up to something," she says, "and I don't know what. I'm supposed to be her second-in-command. I'm supposed to be protecting her. But she's locked me out. What am I supposed to do now?"

A tear runs down her cheek. She ignores it. She can play pretend with that, too.

"Hey. You're not alone in that." Add sighs, or rather he heaves. Ara doubts he can really breathe, with all this dust floating around. "I thought I was supposed to be the tech guy of this squad, but she sent Lu up to get the car instead. I could have hacked into the controls and saved her the trouble of getting hurt." He shakes his head. "But what's done is done."

"I guess." Ara glares at their surroundings. "Where are we?"

"Hmm? Oh, there's the pharmacy."

True to his word, the pharmacy where they first encountered the Behemoth is just around the corner. Glass shards line the floor at their feet; Ara steps over them gingerly, trying not to damage her new shoes. The storefront is a mess of broken glass and rotting drywall. They shuffle inside, weapons at the ready, and begin to pick their things.

It's a good thing Elesis got them new backpacks, too, because they'd never be able to bring all of the stuff they find in there back by hand. Ara packs her pockets full of bandages and antiseptic and all the medications for common ailments that she finds haven't passed their _best by_ date, and then she gets to work on the food in the back. Filling her new water bottle is much easier than having to figure out a way to pack each plastic bottle individually into her backpack. She grabs a can of pickled button mushrooms, which hits the ground with a _clunk_ when she misjudges her throw by an inch.

"You okay back there?" Add asks, and suddenly yells out. Ara rushes towards him immediately. He's in the aisle with the sanitary products, and she doesn't know it he'll be able to stand his own-

But then she relaxes when she sees the way he handles the ski poles. The zombie doesn't even stand a chance. He pins it to the ground by the stomach, and tears the thing in two with the pair of ski poles. "Jeez," Ara says, as he slices the thing's head off for good measure, "vicious, much?"

"I learned from the best," he replies. "How's your gathering going?"

"Better than expected."

They walk away from the pharmacy like kings, pockets dripping with treasures. "We just completed the quest," Add says, shouldering his backpack a little more. "Now all that's left is to slay the Behemoth again."

Ara's heart wrenches. "They're probably off doing that, right now," she says quietly. The precious few moments of clarity as she rummaged through the shelves of the pharmacy - or, at least what felt like moments of clarity - are lost once again to the terrifying thoughts of betrayal.

Add shakes his head. "Ara, I think you're beating yourself up a bit here," he says. "You're not Elesis."

"Wh-"

"Uh, I think I can rephrase that a bit better. You can't think the exact same things as her, every minute of the day. You have your own thoughts, and she has her own." He offers a beatific sile. "What if she's just as scared as you right now?"

"Elesis? Elesis Sieghart? Scared?" Ara snorts. "Not for the next few thousand years."

"Okay, but she's still got things to be afraid of, sometimes. The river," and both of them shudder here, "the river is something that scares her. She's kept that to herself because it puts on a front, right? She's the fearless leader, never afraid to dive into danger to keep her team alive. She's got a lot of hidden fears that she'll never tell us because of that.

"It's okay that you don't know what she's planning, and you're upset about it. That's fine. But what I'm trying to say is that given her exact track record, and given that she's never been good at opening up about these things, I think she might be trying to protect all of us from something." He shrugs, and then looks sheepish. "I probably sound like an asshole for saying that."

Ara winces. "Kinda, but it's the truth. It's Elesis. What should I expect? She'll shout her love to the world from the rooftops, but she won't even tell me about her deepest fears." She laughs, and the bitterness fades just as well as the joy. "Thanks for talking to me, Add. I really appreciate it."

It's at that exact moment, that from somewhere in the mall, someone screams.

Ara's blood goes cold.

* * *

"You're kinda distraught," Lu says observingly. "You wanna talk about it?"

This is a very new thing for Lu to say. It's also not something Ain ever thought Lu could be capable of asking him.

Maybe it's because they're stuck sitting together on a half-disintegrated couch while Ciel rummages in the "back of the store" for shoes in his size, but Ain has never felt so up close and personal with Lu. It's like the time Mother brought him to the zoo, and one of the zookeepers stuck out her hand and let a massive tarantula climb onto his shoulder.

Nonetheless, Ain feels a bit lost as Lu stares at him worriedly. He's got an old, ELIA-issued boot on his left foot and a brand new hiking boot on his right. Part of him doesn't want to change either boot. The issue of the zombies still eats away at the back of his mind.

He didn't want to admit it, but he has to, now that he's seen the kinds of things that have festered under the roof of the Altera Core. The zombies aren't human. It's as Rose once said, soon after she joined the team, after putting a bullet through the head of a zombie that stumbled into their shelter: _you can't reason with zombies. They aren't people._ She'd just wiped down her pistol after that, like it was no big deal to shoot and kill.

Ain understands why now. The Behemoth was just the beginning. The rippling mountains of flesh and skin and oddly placed bones are just proof. Who knows what else lurks beneath the surface? He left Nirvana with the skills to deal with people, not with mindless zombies.

Maybe because he understands that now, he can sympathize with Lu a little. She looks like she still awaits an answer. She's probably always waiting for an answer.

Does he really trust her with his weaknesses, though? He's untrained in the martial arts, and doesn't know nearly enough about handling weapons to face her and the skills she gained from whatever she did as a kid. He can barely even use the garden shears he and Ciel so painstakingly got; the one zombie they encountered, and he practically had to bash it over the head to get rid of it.

He sighs. "I'm finally starting to see just how lucky I was to get to you guys," he says, "when I left Nirvana."

Lu doesn't even move. "Please elaborate."

Ain flinches, but she doesn't react to that, either. "I left Nirvana thinking I could deal with the zombies like I dealt with people," he says. "You know, because my paramedic residency was in the poor part of Elder, I had to learn how to break up fights, how to get out of conflict with someone injured. I was expecting to deal with that when I came here. Not... whatever we're actually dealing with." He tries to put on a smile, but fails. "You remember that one time when Rose first joined us and she just shot the zombie that came into the shelter?"

"Oh yeah." Lu giggles a little; it's eerie in the echoes of the shoe store. "I think Ciel's eyes nearly fell out of his head because he was so surprised."

"She said something like _you can't reason with zombies_." The words come more easily, now that he's gotten them started. "I finally understand now, thanks to the Behemoth and the things we saw in the dark. It was far away, but it _scared_ me, because I'm-" he heaves a breath. "I'm not ready to deal with that."

This time, Lu does look up. She studies him with a careful eye, like she's never seen a man so broken in her life. "You're scared," she announces, which is pretty accurate. "More accurately, you're scared of admitting you're scared."

Ain makes a face. "Thank you, Doctor Lu," he says, "please elaborate."

"You've got things to hide, I get it. Add's got a shitty dad that he hid from us for a month. Elesis has never said anything about why she's so afraid of rivers. Ciel won't tell me about his actual sister. Everyone's got something to hide. I get it." Lu gives him a wry smile. "That's where I come in.

"You guys don't know this, because I never say anything about it, but," Lu says, gaze trained on the ground, "when I was younger, I wasn't ever afforded any time to do anything I wanted. The only thing I liked was cheerleading, and even then, my parents made me do it competitively as soon as I started showing interest in it. I had to hide every interest I had." Her head flips up, bringing her hair along in a flounce of white. "There. I said it." It's accompanied by a grin. "I don't have things to hide anymore, because my overbearing parents are probably dead and you'd have to literally throw me off a cliff to see me be a cheerleader again."

"So you're good at figuring out what people are hiding because you had to hide things yourself," Ain sums up. "That's... a pretty unique skill. I'm sorry you had to learn how to do that in that way."

"It's alright." Lu seems apologetic. "We all learn things, one way or another. And I learned something about you, today."

"What?"

"That you're capable of growing beyond what you know." She slugs him in the shoulder; he squawks even though it's not particularly painful. "Oh, c'mon, I barely even touched you!"

"Please warn me before you do that!"

She sticks her tongue out at him.

Ciel emerges from the storage room at that exact moment. "... Did I walk into an alternate reality?" he mutters, crossing over to plop himself down beside Lu. "Since when were you two on talking terms?"

"Since Ain stopped being a dumbo and admitted to needing karate lessons," Lu says nonchalantly. Ain splutters and waves his hands, _no, when did I even begin to mention karate_ , but Lu just pushes them down. "Lucky for you, I have a junior black belt in karate, or at least I did before I moved to Elrios."

"That doesn't necessarily qualify you to teach," Ciel says gently, before turning to Ain. "You got all the things you wanted?"

"Yeah." Thankfully, the walk-in clinic that they spotted on the map wasn't destroyed, raided or infected; he picked up some boxes of alcohol swab pads from there, among other things. "You have the food and water?"

Ciel nods. "Let's head back."

"Ooh, you can make something with the canned papaya for lunch," Lu suggests excitedly. "I bet Ara will like something salty and sweet!"

As Ain throws the other new boot on, he looks over his old ones. They've served him a long, long time, and besides, his duty to ELIA doesn't end with getting these guys to safety. "Lu, may I borrow your knife?" he asks. "Just for a second.

Together, they carve out the ELIA patches from his old boots. Lu punches holes in the sides, and they're able to thread the laces through the holes to affix them to the new boots. "That'll do it," Ain mumbles, tying his new laces smartly. "There."

"Looks good to me," Lu says, beaming. "Let's head back."

There's a rumble in the distance, and then a shrill scream and a gunshot. The three of them are instantly on edge. "Oh my god," Ain says, horrified, "that was Elesis."

"We need to find her," Ciel says, and they all grab their backpacks and run. The source of the sound is too far away, even with the ringing echoes. "I think it came from the subway elevator," Lu says breathlessly, bounding forwards as Dynamo mewls pitifully in her pocket. "We need to find her."

"The gunshot was probably Rose," Ain says, and then thinks again. "It had to be Rose. Elesis doesn't even _have_ a firearm on her person."

"She has a pistol on her leg," Ciel says gravely. "I've never seen her use it."

They meet up with Ara and Add by the subway doors, where Add is prying open the hinges with his tools and bare fingers. "Hurry," Ara hisses.

"Alright, it's done." Add backs up and delivers a sound kick to the door - even Lu's eyes light up. The door topples over, and they all rush into the tiny corridor.

Elesis and Rose are standing in front of the elevator, just as tired and panting as the rest of them. Elesis is covered in zombie blood, and Rose has her guns pointed at the gaping maw that might have been the door to the elevator. There's festering black blood splattered all over the ground.

"Elesis Sieghart," Ara says dangerously, "you'd _better_ have an explanation for this."

Their fearless leader, true to her nature, offers a bright grin.

"Uh, surprise?"

* * *

 **A/N: Elesis please stop being a sneaky mcsneakerson**

 **will we find out what she did? tune in next time!**

 **but honestly this is just an antithesis to Meltdown (II) thanks to the particular cast of POVs. i chugged the entire chapter out in about 1.5 hours thanks to a word sprint with friends. it was fun to get back into the swing of Ara and Ain, though I honestly haven't played around with Ain enough. perhaps we'll be seeing more of him in the future.**

 **and finally, _finally_ i can start getting into the friendship between Ain and Lu and Ciel. though, i must warn you, the peace won't last. it's me. the peace never lasts.**

 **~Marg**


	37. Meltdown (VIII)

"Do you think," Elesis muses, that we could just set the subway system on fire instead."

Beside her, Rose shakes her head. "We'd end up asphyxiating from the smoke," she says, "and it's unlikely that the zombies would burn to death quickly, either." She makes a sour face. "As well, what would we set fire to? The bloodhounds live in the subway car, and we can't reach it without risking immediate, painful death."

She's right, and Elesis hates that she's right, because the more she thinks about her own plan, the more she doubts her ability to pull it off. Currently, their plan is a modified version of Rose's original one: they'll catch another toddler to use as bait, and use the last of Lu's jerky to lay a trail for the bloodhounds towards the elevator. But as always, there are… _complications_ , to say the least.

As far as they can tell, it's still pretty early in the morning, maybe seven or eight. That means most of the zombies are getting sluggish, and that's no fun for a pack of trained bloodhounds. Elrian police dogs, trained as they are, like a good hunt. There is no hunt if there is no chase. The bloodhounds are probably _starving_ , and will most likely eat anything given to them, including two uninfected humans with guns.

This also means hunting down another toddler for bait is going to be difficult. Solitary kindergarteners, or toddlers as they're referred to, are usually plentiful in malls since most were too young to have attended school before the Outbreak, allowing their parents to bring them around. It's a lot harder to find, say a whole pack of runners in a mall—the ones that Ara and Add encountered might have been students from the nearby university skipping class.

But for whatever reason, no matter how hard they look, Elesis and Rose just cannot find any more toddler zombies. The childcare centre is empty, with the skeletal remains of a caregiver being the only hint of what might have happened to it. There are no toddlers in the handful of toy stores they visit, and even the massive indoor playground turns up empty.

"Maybe," Rose suggests, "just _maybe_ , we were lucky and stumbled across the last one last night."

"I sincerely hope not," Elesis mumbles, straightening her back and rolling her shoulders. "There might still be a few stores we haven't checked."

They shuffle slowly through the hall corridors, hoping not to draw the attention of any prowling bloodhounds, and each footstep brings another fatalistic thought to mind. Elesis knows full well she's playing a very dangerous game, one that has a much too high chance of getting her killed, infected, or some combination of the two. "Rose," she says quietly, "I need you to do something for me. If I get bitten and infected, I—"

"Don't finish that thought," Rose interjects, a little angrily. "Just—don't." She looks up from the floor, and although her eyes are dark in the low light, Elesis can imagine them snapping with blue flame. "You're our _leader_. If you lose hope, then what's left for the rest of us?"

Elesis blinks.

"I told you this yesterday, and I'll tell you it again: I'm here to keep you alive." Rose looks practically on the verge of tears, out of anger and frustration and a few other things that might be shock and adrenaline. "You're a fool sometimes, Elesis, but you're my friend, and now that I've seen what family means to you I _need_ to get you back to yours. So stop being so—so _self-sacrificing_. It's selfish of you to say that. Please, just think things through."

Rose is right, and Elesis knows as much. She's going to be no good to the team dead, and there's no point in being a defeatist about it. She sighs, and cedes to the argument. "Alright," she says. "Let's find somewhere safe, and stop to think about the plan."

The safe place they choose turns out to be an old toy store. An elderly zombie, falling apart at the seams, sits behind the cash register, rising up with an eerie moan to greet them with its teeth and nails. Elesis swiftly dispatches it, grinding its head to a fine paste against the counter. "So, we can't get a toddler," she says, shaking the last of the zombie paste off her baseball bat. "What next?"

"We're going to have to settle for a grown zombie, then," Rose says, gritting her teeth in frustration. "I don't know how we'll transport it down, but we have to do one way or another."

"We also have to manage to lure _all_ the bloodhounds into the elevator," Elesis adds, thinking about the rippling forms of the dogs in the dark of the subway from last night, and the sleeping lumps in the station earlier when they went to survey. "Did you see how many there were?"

"I think five in all, including the pack leader." Rose shudders. "Let's… Assuming we _can't_ get all the bloodhounds into the elevator before we drop it. What do we do?"

"We'll leave another zombie at the bottom of the elevator shaft, to distract the ones that don't get into the cart," Elesis decides. "Then it's just a matter of dropping the elevator cart."

"Uh, another problem," Rose says. "How are we going to drop the elevator cart?"

This is, in fact, a problem. "Very carefully," Elesis says, and then thinks better of it. "Darn. Alteran technology says no, doesn't it. We'll have to break the cables."

"Let's test out the elevator first, just to make sure it'll still function," Rose suggests, "just so we can be sure it'll even support _one_ of our weights. I don't know what the Alterans made their elevator cables out of, but if it's rusted, then we may not even be able to raise or lower the elevator car."

The short trek back to the fifth basement, with their new backpacks and canteens, is much more quiet. Elesis doesn't like having to lie to her team, much less to her own girlfriend, but it helps to make it seem a bit more believable to the others when they've brought their promised supplies back to the base. They dump everything in the corner, and Rose begins the pack the remainder of the battery cell from the Battering Ram into her new backpack. "Let's test the elevator, quickly, before Lu comes back," she urges quietly.

It sends a chill down Elesis's spine just to step back into the corridor to the subway station. She forces the nausea down, gestures at the panel for Rose, then kneels on guard by the door, hopefully blocking all the light of Rose's miniature flashlight from entering the station.

Quickly, Rose begins to pry at the panel with a screwdriver from Add's collection and her bare hands, disassembling it in a job that probably should have taken much longer than twenty seconds. It's honestly no surprise to Elesis that Rose is good with her hands, though. She pushes bundles of cables aside before zeroing in on the ones she needs, and instead of clipping them, simply rips out the cord she wants and starts to attach it to her battery pack.

"Hit the button," she says. "I hope this works."

Elesis hits the button.

The elevator begins to rumble, and from within the station, the bloodhounds perk up. "Oh, that's bad," she manages.

Thankfully, the elevator must have only been at a low floor, because the door open with short shrieks soon afterwards. Pacified, the bloodhounds return to their slumber.

"They must be more or less nocturnal," Rose mutters, unplugging the elevator. Immediately, the fans stop whirring, and the door clicks into its open position, presumably locked in place. "The glass doors in this station are pretty firm. I bet a train had just departed from the southern station when the bloodhounds got here. They'll have to travel the whole length of the Core to get to the northern wing, to get up the stairs to hunt."

She shines her flashlight upwards into the elevator cart; Elesis follows the trickle of light. There's a collection of ceiling panels, as well as light panels, that block the way. Rose simply climbs onto the railing and begins to pry off sections to hand to Elesis. "Hold onto those. I might want to put them back in later."

"Rose, you're a literal technological genius," Elesis marvels. "How'd you—where'd you learn how to do all of this? This is amazing!"

"I was a weapons specialist in military college," Rose says simply. "We took courses in engineering, material studies, all of that… I'm thankfully I've finally found a use for it all." She squints, pointing her flashlight up while her other hand dangles with a ceiling tile. "... Damned Alterans and their stainless steel cables. We won't be able to cut through those."

"Uh, isn't there a counterbalance to elevator carts?"

"Yeah, but it's all the way up _there_ , and we wouldn't be able to access it unless we went into the shaft." Rose sticks the flashlight between her teeth and begins to reinstall her panel. "Ere ith 'n uher othion, thuh."

Elesis barely manages to restrain a snarky comment. "Come again?"

"Pweh. There is one other options, though, and it's going to be… Dangerous." Rose gestures back towards the panel. "I can override the buttons, and stop the elevator at exact points along the elevator shaft. If we can figure out where the counterbalance is relative to the cart, then we could stop the cart the exact point where they're on the same level. One of us could step on top of the cart, break off the counterbalance, and _immediately_ step out and _hopefully_ not get killed in the process as the elevator plummets." She grimaces. "That, and there's a manual drop option, but I don't know how fast it'll go."

The elevator falls silent for a moment as Elesis considers their options. "So the counterbalance is going to be at a higher storey," she summarizes. "We have to plant the bait here, get up to that higher storey before the hellhounds realize where we are, ensure that the hellhounds are actually in the elevator shaft, and then one of us has to pull off a highly dangerous move that may or may not get us killed."

Rose nods.

"Great," Elesis says. "Let's do it."

There's a loud crash somewhere above. "Was that… Lu?" she ponders, taking the flashlight from Rose quickly so the other girl can pack up the battery cell. "Oh my god. She wasn't kidding when she said she's never sat in the driver's seat before."

"Your two-minute driving lesson wasn't exactly helpful," Rose mutters, slinging her backpack over her shoulders. "Alright, let's dash."

Lu looks pleasantly surprised when she drives into the basement in her slightly-crushed minivan, like she wasn't expecting them to be back so quickly. Elesis immediately notices the plastic shovels duct-taped to her hand like a splint. "Oh my god, what happened to your hand?" she frets. "Did a zombie do this?"

"No, I was just dumb," Lu says with a giggle. There's a quick flash of pain across her face, like she's been through much more, but she's able to cover it up just as quickly. "It's just a bruise. I'll recover soon."

(It doesn't seem to convince anyone, not even Lu herself.)

After that, the three of them fall into the familiar pattern of loading the car. It takes a lot of self control to remember that it's not the Battering Ram, that it's just some regular minivan. Elesis reaches for parts of the Battering Ram multiple times, and beats herself up internally when she remembers it's not the same anymore. She grits her teeth, tucks a pallet of water under a tarp, then settles Ciel's cooking gear on top.

The door to the stairwell _flies_ open. Elesis looks up to see Ara, bright as she always is, running across the lot to join her side, and runs to meet her in the middle with a tight embrace. "Ara, how is it?" she asks, pulling away temporarily to look at the new heavy hiking boots she's wearing. "Did you run into zombies?"

"Only a few, but we got everything we needed!" Part of Elesis aches; Ara still knows nothing of the existence of the bloodhounds. "Oh, and my boots, they're so comfortable. I think I could actually run a marathon in these."

Lu pops up from over by the car. "New boots? What're they like? Do they have laces?"

As Ara moves to show off her boots to Lu, Elesis returns to shuffling things around the car, deliberately arranging and un-arranging until she's placing sleeping bags in the trunk, next to Rose. "They don't know," she whispers. "That's a good thing, right?"

"Good thing for us," Rose replies, "unless we die. Then it's bad for _everyone_."

Thankfully, before anyone can question why they're whispering like conspiracy theorists, the door slams open again, and Ain and Ciel come crashing in, clearly terrified. Elesis exchanges a worried glance with Rose before running to intercept them.

Ciel, protective as he is, is already holding onto Lu like she's a lifeline, practically shielding her with his body from the horrors outside. Ain leans against the wall weakly, holding his middle like he's about to be sick. "We ran into some really terrifying things," he says quietly, entire body shaking with fear. "I don't know what it was, or if it was anything at all, but there was _something_ prowling in the hallway outside." He shudders all over. "It was like a _mountain_ of flesh."

Elesis takes a deep breath, touches Rose's shoulder comfortingly, and prepares to lie through her teeth.

* * *

The feeling of hollowness rings through the parking lot. _Let's stay alive_ , her mind scoffs mockingly. _Oh, how low my standards have fallen._

Unfortunately, the iciness of Ara's kiss still lingers on her cheek, like a lasting ghost of what feels like years ago. Elesis inhales dust and guilt and fragments of a lost past in the frozen heart of a technological oasis, and nearly chokes when a bug flies into her mouth. "Ack," she mutters, managing to gag it out, almost painfully. "This is dumb."

"Yeah, but it's our only chance," Rose says, tugging on her end of the net a little tighter. In the space between them, the two zombies they've managed to wrangle squirm restlessly. Briefly, Elesis entertains the illustrious title of _zombie rancher_ , but sets it aside for later contemplation. "Well, I suppose we have other options still open, if you want to try them out."

"Rose, you know just as much as I do that our chances of killing all the hellhounds in one go are highest with this plan," she says. "We can't afford to let any of them go, and our chances of getting the leader along the way are the highest if we do this."

"Then, I guess," Rose says, "this is where we say goodbye."

They stop at the narrow corridor to the elevator in the fourth basement, where Elesis will be setting up her last stand of sorts. If all goes according to plan, Rose will run up to the main floor, which is where the counterbalance comes level with the elevator, while Elesis ties one zombie into the elevator cart with the net and let the other one splatter in the shaft underneath. Then, with the barest amount of leeway, Elesis will ride on top of the elevator cart and reach through the broken paneling to fire a shot at the glass doors, hopefully shattering them and catching the bloodhounds' attention. Once all the bloodhounds are in the elevator cart (or under it), she'll holler up the elevator shaft, allowing Rose to lift her up so they can sever the counterbalance together and kill the bloodhounds for once and for all.

It's a good plan on paper. They have no paper. The uncertainties keep stacking and stacking, and to Elesis, the future looks a little grim.

She's about to stick a hand out to Rose to shake when the Empyrean girl (Rose, Rose, _Rose_ ) wraps her in a tight hug, like she'll never let go. "Don't die," she says. "I don't want this to be goodbye."

"This won't," Elesis insists. "We'll make it out of this alive and well."

Rose gives her one last mournful look before running for the door and slipping out, quiet and deadly like a shadow.

Elesis sighs and turns to the two zombies in corridor with her. "Well, guys," she says, "one way or another, we've gotta make this work."

She starts with the larger one, since she's pretty sure the bloodhounds will target it like the Behemoth targeted the larger group of people. She manages to disentangle the smaller zombie, ignoring it for the time being, and gets to work on wrapping the larger one while its face is still half-bashed in. It's not nearly as easy as she'd expected it to be, partially because of its size, and also because Rose isn't here to help her this time.

"Dammit it, will you just stop that," she growls as the smaller one swings an errant limb at her. "I'm going to actually pound your face in if you try that one more time.

The smaller zombie does not move aside, and screeches as it raises its jagged bony stump again.

"Alright, that's it." Elesis reaches for her baseball bat, which she thankfully had the sense to bring with her. She aims carefully, brings the bat over her head, and slams it down.

The thing about decomposing zombie bodies is that it's always a gamble as to how they react to blunt trauma. Usually, Elesis gets the clean feeling of her bat sinking into rotting flesh, the satisfying squelch knowing that she's kept her friends safe for just a little longer. Sometimes, the eyes and tongue can move on their own a little longer without control; she tends to just smash those in as well before they can start moving towards her.

Unfortunately, she gambled wrong this time: the head of the zombie pops open like a sac of bile, and it all comes flooding out with an awful gush. It's only chance that makes her lose her balance a second before it hits her, causing her to lean back just a bit too far and topple as the stream of blood sprays outwards like a geyser and only stains the front of her clothes.

It's a whole ten seconds before she remembers what she's doing again, and the first thing she does is to laugh. "Fuck you too, I guess," she says, scraping the remains of its still-twitching body off the ground with her bat and shoving them into the narrow gap between the floor and the edge of the elevator cart that Rose deliberately left behind. The body squeaks and gurgles as she prods it, and finally flies down into the darkness to land with a wet thud.

"Now for you," Elesis says, turning to the larger zombie. It's starting to untangle itself from the net. "Oh, you'd _better_ stay still if you don't want to end up like your friend down there."

One half-beat up zombie and a mess with a net later, Elesis stands back to look at her handiwork. It's not clean at all, and she's covered in rapidly-drying zombie blood, but at least it's done. Satisfied, she plants one foot on the railing, like she's seen Rose do just this morning, and climbs up onto the elevator cart through the hole they left in the roof. The zombie head offers another sick _squelch_ when she steps on it for leverage. She shakes the rotting brain matter off her shoe and cups her hands around her mouth.

"ROSE!" Her voice sounds almost like a hiss as it resonates through the elevator shaft, upwards to where there's almost a sense of dim light. "DROP ME DOWN!"

And just like that, the elevator doors to the fourth basement close, and Elesis gulps. They don't want the bloodhounds to escape into any of the other storeys, after all. She grips onto the elevator cable and tries not to look as the world descends in rusting gears and whirling machinery all around her.

Unfortunately, the zombie body at the bottom of the elevator shaft has done something, and it's not something good. There's still only the tiniest gap of room between her and the now-opening door, even as she kneels on top of the elevator cart. The wheels turn, the cable almost goes slack, but the cart just cannot go any lower with the body in the way. " _JUST SHOOT, ELESIS,_ " Rose yells from above, her voice a dim echo.

Elesis grimaces, and takes her pistol out of the holster on her hip. She hasn't used it yet once since Rose gave it to her; that's all about to change.

She takes aim through the hole in the elevator shaft, practically dangling upside down, zeroes in on the glass, and shoots.

Fortunately, the pistol does fire, and it does hit the glass. Unfortunately, it doesn't shatter the glass like she'd hoped, but leaves a dense spiderweb crater from the impact point. _Fucking laminated glass!_

From within, the bloodhounds begin to stir.

"Damn," she whispers, aiming again. This one has to hit. _This one has to hit._

She fires again.

This time, the bullet hits the glass at some point in the fracture, causing the whole thing to fall like a sheet of ice. She immediately slips back out of the hole in the elevator, as the bloodhounds rush to their feet and begin to tear at their prey.

"ROSE!" she yells, and begins to feel the rumble of the gears winding up. The elevator moves up, bringing three of the bloodhounds inside. Elesis feels a quiet sense of elation as the elevator doors to the fifth basement clothes below her, trapping the remaining two with the body at the bottom. At least they've gotten all of the bloodhounds.

And then something yips at her ankles, and all she can do is barely bite back a scream as she realizes that, holy shit, they've almost gotten entirely through the zombie bait, and now they're coming for her. The lead bloodhound is in this particular group - just her luck. She slams down with her baseball bat when a snout comes up through the hole in the panelling, and kicks away paws and claws. She's dancing dangerously close to the edge of the elevator, but the cable practically burns to the touch, and there's no way to get them to stop.

Then there's light, or at least what feels like it, and she looks up to find Rose with the flashlight between her teeth, peering down into the elevator shaft. "'urry!" she urges, beckoning wildly with her free hand. "Jum' u'!"

Elesis can't jump, but with the bloodhounds at her feet, she sure can try. A snout comes up through the cart; she steps on it, hears the _crack_ of snapping cartilage and bone, and just _happens_ to grab Rose's hand and step into the corridor and onto solid ground.

Rose flicks the switch, hard; the gears grind to a screeching stop, spitting sparks in every direction, and the panel fizzes out in her hand. She spits the flashlight out; it clatters to the ground nearby. "No more manual drop," she yells. "Just kill the counterbalance!"

The counterbalance is an electronic one, because of course Altera would make everything electronic. Elesis tosses her baseball bat aside to steady her grip on her pistol, and fires, once, twice, _three_ times.

The counterbalance gives out. Miles upon miles of steel cable start to whip through the elevator shaft as Elesis grabs Rose and dives to the floor a short distance away, anything to keep them from dying to the angry iron snakes inside. A blood-curdling howl arises from within the shaft, and then an earth-shaking crash, and then it's gone.

Elesis coughs weakly. "Did we do it?" she asks, tempted to pound on her chest to clear the dust from her lungs. "Did we get them all?"

"I think so." Rose rolls out from underneath her, and immediately makes a face. "How'd you get so much zombie blood on yourself?"

"Ah," Elesis says, "one of the bait zombies was being uncooperative."

Then Rose is yelling, and Elesis feels something clamp down on her boots, _thank god_ she wears combats, and begins to drag her downwards towards the dark elevator shaft. "ROSE!" she screams, grabbing onto something, anything, she can't die here-

There's a gunshot, and then the weight goes still. Elesis opens her eyes to see Rose standing over her, trembling in every limb but resolute as she holds her still smoking pistols, aimed at the lead bloodhound that slips down the shaft when Elesis manages to stand up.

Finally, for once and for all, the bloodhounds are gone.

Before they can even take a breath, the mall entrance bursts open, and in floods in, _wow_ , all their friends. Ara is at the head of this group, looking like she's about to murder a man as she takes in the surroundings. "Elesis Sieghart," she says, "you'd _better_ have an explanation for this."

And what can she do? She's Elesis, alright. She gives Rose a glance, silently asking her opinion. The other girl raises an eyebrow, like she's tempted to hear how she'll resolve this. She puts on her brightest grin.

"Uh, surprise?"

* * *

Elesis sits crosslegged patiently while Ara peels chunks of dried zombie blood off her. While gross and smelly, zombie blood has the helpful characteristic of clotting quickly upon exposure to oxygen, much faster than normal human blood. All she has to do is to rip it off in flakes and pieces.

"You could have died." Ara's voice trembles. "I could have lost you."

"I'm still here, Ara." Elesis drops her gaze, unable to meet her girlfriend's eyes. "I didn't want all of you to worry. I didn't even want Rose to know, at first. She was the one who woke up and joined me." She laughs bitterly, remembering the conversations they'd had the previous night. "I don't think she even slept."

Ara yanks particularly hard on a piece of zombie blood, ripping out a few strands of Elesis's hair along with it. "Yes, but _both_ of you could have died," she stresses. "And we wouldn't have had any idea of what happened. We would have spent the rest of our days wandering down here, looking for you. The bloodhounds would have probably gotten us, too."

A tear splatters against the fabric of her pants, staining it dark grey. "Don't ever, _ever_ leave me in the dark like that again," she insists, tears starting to flow freely down her face. "I'm supposed to be there for you, but how am I supposed to do that when I don't even know what _you're_ doing?"

Elesis gathers Ara into her arms and puts her face into her hair, closing her eyes and letting Ara weep quietly into her shoulder. "I'm sorry," she whispers. "I'll tell you, next time, and the time after that, and from now on outwards."

She looks up to make eye contact, first with Rose, then with Add. Both of them look stricken. "We'll all do better and better," she says softly, a promise she's not sure she can keep, "and stick together. Like a real family."

The stagnant Alteran darkness offers her no answers to the questions she's still dying to ask.

* * *

 **A/N: this extremely late chapter brought to you by late-night panic, arguing over the naming of plants, and my classmates discovering my ffn account. to the guilty parties: i am going to feed you ghost chilies, just you wait.**

 **but here ends the _Meltdown_ arc! this was a really fun arc to explore, to build and play around with, but sometimes it reminds me heavily of Deepnest from the game Hollow Knight (dark, creepy, difficult to navigate, bullies players like me) and so i need a bit of a break. i bet our main cast needs an escape from the darkness, too.**

 **surprisingly, this scene was the first one i had planned for this entire arc! my inspiration came from the dark subway elevator in a large mall downtown, which i got to experience up close and personal. i spent much time even before the first _Meltdown_ chapter was posted theorizing ways to do this, researching the physics behind the elevator scenes. no, you can't do a lot of this with actual elevators - please keep in mind that Elesis and Rose are trained professionals, and Elrios uses a lot of different tech from our world. tldr don't actually try to hack an elevator**

 **so what's next after this? as y'all can see, i'm starting to grow little cracks in the team, ones that i'll be exploring in more depth over the next few arcs. for the immediate future, however, the squad will remain in Altera, hunting down traces of a darker past. this means i get to play around with everything i know of virology, which i think is an absolutely delicious discipline.**

 **till next time!**

 **~Marg**


	38. Borne in Blood (II)

"I'm sorry."

Elesis looks up as she tugs her new sweater over her head. Rose stands awkwardly to the side of of the cubicle, holding onto the fading boards with an iron grip. "I'm sorry," she repeats. "I put us both in massive amounts of danger, and subsequently endangered our entire team."

The gravity of the situation dawns on Elesis very slowly, partially because she's still walking around in just her socks. She pulls on her boots and plunks herself back down into the chair she's claimed as her own, in a rather futile attempt to dispel the tension in the air. "Come sit down," she says, gesturing at the seat in front of her. This office was once home to an accounting firm; it's no wonder there are so many seats available. "Don't be shy about it."

Rose hesitantly pulls the chair away from the desk and sits down gingerly. "The last time I had to consult someone at a desk like this, it was just before I was deployed to Elrios," she says quietly.

"Ah, but that's how we came to meet you!" Elesis puts on her brightest grin as she shrugs her new vest over her shoulders—Ara had declared her old clothes unsalvageable after trying to peel all the zombie blood off, and with the Core clean of bloodhounds, acquiring a new set was a walk in the park. "So what's on your mind? What's with the sudden apologies?"

A moment's pause, as Rose shuffles uncomfortably in her seat. "I thought about it some more," she says, clearly on edge, "the plan, I mean. I suppose it was very much driven by adrenaline in the moment, but we really only had a very, very low chance of making it work."

She formulates her words carefully, like she's tempting Elesis to ask for a number. Elesis, having nearly failed math three times in high school, doesn't know how to take the bait. "Rose, we're alive, and the bloodhounds are dead."

Rose snorts. "It should be the other way around," she says. "Ara said as much - she could have lost you. We could have lost you."

Then it hits her.

It's not in Ara's nature to go about lecturing others, not over something like this that she can and has taken into her own hands. Elesis doesn't have to fear about her girlfriend trying to intimidate their other team members, except maybe Add, but that's all in the past anyhow.

Rose must have accidentally overheard their conversation while Ara was trying to clean up the zombie blood. Rose, who hides so much under her jacket in that web of tattooed roses, who keeps to herself in her corner and never lets anything out. Rose, who is so quiet that sometimes she seems to disappear. Rose, the stoic Empyrean soldier who did everything to hide the tear streaks on her face when they found her in the wastelands.

How much has she been trying to hold back, that she's doubled back and has to open up to Elesis about it?

"Rose," she says, "I'm sorry that you felt the need to apologize to me about this."

She zeroes in on the set of photos on the desk in front of her in an attempt to not make eye contact. There's a willowy woman captured in each photograph, smiling brightly, perhaps a lover of the person who once worked in this very cubicle. "Maybe I need to bring back some of the team building exercises," she tries to joke, "because this isn't something you should be apologizing for, Rose. Your plan worked. We're okay and we're safe."

Rose purses her lips. "Yeah, but-"

"Look at it this way." Elesis lays her hands on the table; she very much does not have another way to look at it. "Did we get out alive?"

"Yes-"

"Did we kill the bloodhounds? Did no one get hurt?"

"Alright, I get it." Rose's lips press into a thin smile. "It's just... I didn't expect the nightmares would be so intense."

Elesis knows the nightmares. She's seen enough people die to replay a million painful deaths every night before she sleeps, and it's only because her mind is so tattered already that she doesn't conjure up another million deaths to add to the count. She takes Rose's hands in her own, and squeezes them comfortingly. "It's the pack leader, isn't it," she says softly. "The moment when it was about to drag me down the elevator shaft."

Rose makes a very small sound, nods, and retreats into the collar of her jacket.

It's one thing to console Ara about wandering off without her. It's a whole other to console Rose, who was witness to the worst of it. Elesis closes her eyes and sees Rose burn up in a shower of sparks from the elevator panel, sees her torn apart by bloodhounds, sees only a few strands of her hair as cruel souvenirs. Rose might not show it, but at the end of the day, she cares for them all so, _so_ much, and she deserves better than to have to curl up and cry on her own.

"I _saw_ that thing kill you," Rose says. "It was entirely chance that I remembered my pistols."

Elesis squeezes her hands again. "I'm here. I'm alive."

She watches as Rose drops her head softly onto the desk's surface, and listens for the gentle hum of her breathing as she falls asleep. She seems peaceful, like Elesis's mere presence shields her from the nightmares.

If these little reassurances are what brings her team together, then Elesis is willing to go that extra step.

(And if it helps her sleep better too, then who is she to judge?)

* * *

 **A/N: this update brought to you by elerose gang**

 **i don't want to rush any of the relationships in this fic since i'm slowburning all the major ones but consider this the first step in me being self indulgent. this next miniarc will be mostly introspection among the main cast with a bit of adventuring on the side so please bear with me while i realign my stars and figure out the pacing and also try to juggle my IB exams**

 **also literally everyone in this fic needs therapy**

 **~Marg**


	39. Open Skies (II)

The hallway echoes menacingly behind Ciel as he peers into the nearest shop and deems it safe. "Let's go," he whispers, pulling Lu in by the shoulder and grabbing Ain before ducking in.

It's still so, so dark, despite the fact that they have flashlights, _where are their flashlights_ , and Ciel doesn't know what he's running from anymore but he knows he's running and it's not safe to stay here. This store is only a temporary escape as they wait for the horrors outside to pass by.

The shadow of death pauses just in front of their storefront, and Ciel takes the time to grab his two companions and duck behind a shelf further back. "Where are Elesis and the others?" he whispers furiously. "They should have come for us by now."

"I don't know," Lu replies, except she doesn't sound like Lu, she sounds like _Terre_ and Ciel's heart breaks to hear her so _scared_. "T-they might have gotten lost."

Then Ain is shoving his flashlight into Ciel's hands, and he rolls his sleeves up and grabs his garden shears with conviction. "I'll go find them," he says. He sounds like Wolvernian. "Don't worry. I'll find them and bring them back."

Except that's precisely when a hand clamps down on his shoulder and teeth clamp down on his exposed neck, and it's precisely when something bites Lu in the ankle and drags her away as she screams, and it's precisely when Ciel wakes up with a strangled scream on his lips and sits straight up in his sleeping bag.

The night seems to be clear in the meeting room they've cleared out, the tattered shutters drawn over the window. Ciel sits up, props himself up against a nearby desk, and tries to pace his breathing.

 _Lu is okay_ , he reminds himself. Lu is okay and asleep right next to him, curled up in a ball and snoring lightly after a day of shuffling through shelves. She looks so small in her massive sleeping bag, and her hair shimmers so prettily in what little moonlight filters into the meeting room. She seems to be unburdened by his nightmares; why should he be so worked up when she's alive and right next to her?

There's a click nearby, and his panic rises again, but it's just Ain, making his rounds. It must be his shift now. He barely looks tired at all, but holds eye contact for all of two seconds before he drops to one knee by Ciel's side. "Nightmare?"

"How's patrolling?" Ain gives him a dark look, like _really? Trying to change the subject?_ "Any other supplies we need to find before we leave?"

"Well, I think we have most of the things on Elesis's list," Ain says, "but more than anything, all of us need rest. And that includes you."

Ciel opens his mouth to argue, but Ain shushes him with a finger over his lips. "I am a trained medical professional," he reminds him, "and that means I can tell you that you need sleep, or else you will collapse and die. None of us want that."

They stay like that for a while, Ciel still trying to pace his breathing as Ain kneels next to him with a hand on his shoulder. He's nothing like the Ain from the nightmare, but he's protective all the same in his own way. The others haven't seen Ain worry over "trivial matters" like air quality, not the way Ciel has seen him.

"Everyone's suffering from induced seasonal affective disorder from the darkness," Ain murmurs quietly. "It's making the nightmares worse for a lot of you. We need to get back into the sunlight as soon as we can, after we spent so long in that basement."

Ciel huffs a laugh. "Nightmares, huh."

In the dim half-light of the moon, Ain's mossy eyes are exceptionally green. It's only now that Ciel realizes he might have partial heterochromia, as the paramedic looks him in the eye and pierces through his soul. "You too?"

This is what shakes Ciel back to reality before he drowns in the colours of Ain's eyes. "How bad are yours?" he asks, genuinely curious.

Ain pauses for a moment, and then reaches a hand out to him. "Might as well walk and talk instead of waiting here like sitting ducks."

Ciel takes his hand, and lets himself be hoisted up. He only takes on look back at Lu, who is still snoring away. She looks peaceful.

A bit of shuffling with jackets and shoes and weapons later, they're walking side by side through the empty office building. Ciel supposes it isn't much different from the patrol nights on the roof of the grocery store, except there's a lot more space to stretch their legs. "Mine always start with everyone turning," Ain confesses quietly, his shear blades dragging across the carpet behind him. "And even though I have the medicine to save you all, I'm not much of a lucid dreamer. I'm never able to save any of you."

"So we all die."

"No. Much worse."

Water drips down some empty pipe somewhere. It's a lonely sound, hearing each droplet hit its final destination and never resolve to something greater. Then again, Ciel supposes humanity has just about hit its final destination, too.

"For me, it's always people from my past." _People I wasn't able to protect._ "It tends to be different. This time, it was you, and Lu, but you sounded like Wolvernian and Terre."

Ain blinks. "Who's Wolvernian?"

 _Ah._ He knows about Terre; Ciel has spent many a night telling his friend about his deceased sister. Wolvernian is a part of his past he still hasn't been able to put aside, though. "He was my friend, and my mentor, during the first few days after I lost my family. Before I found Lu. He… taught me to fight for myself. For those I love."

He doesn't talk about how Wolvernian left him. He doesn't have to.

"I'm sorry." Ain tries to offer him a smile, but Ciel knows where the tiredness stops and the struggle for sincerity begins. "He sounds like he was a good man."

"He was." It's the first time in years that Ciel has allowed himself to think of his mentor, of the man who quite literally saved his life. "He taught me to cook."

"Oh." Ain smiles. "Then I'd have to thank him for your wonderful cooking."

They laugh about it for all of a few seconds, but it fades quickly. They don't sully the names of the dead; it's impolite. "I've never had anyone to mentor me like that," Ain muses. "My mother and I were close, but it was only in religion where she really guided me. I was too young to remember my father," he adds quickly, like a hasty afterthought, "and I've never bothered to ask my mother about him."

"I'm sure he's proud of you," Ciel says simply.

Ain stares at him, and smiles. "And I'm sure Wolvernian is proud of you, too." He claps him over the back gently, firmly. "We've come a long way, you and I both."

Ciel can't help but agree with that.

* * *

 **A/N: sorry for the late update! I completely forgot that we had a long weekend and I ended up schmoozing all weekend and writing plans for oneshots that I'll probably never finish**

 **PSA: nightmares suck and the worst ones are about losing the ones you love. also seasonal affective disorder is a real thing and if you're not getting enough sunlight it can seriously impact you. trust me I figured this one out a bit late**

 **we should be out of Altera in about six-ish chapters? unfortunately I'll be consumed with IB exams and studying for all six of those chapters, and then for the next few after that I'll be on vacation. I'll try to prepare chapters ahead of time, but please forgive me if I slip into a sudden hiatus**

 **~Marg**


	40. Had I (II)

"Have I mentioned," Rose says, "that I miss the Battering Ram."

"You've mentioned it six times in the past half hour," Add mumbles, a little absent-mindedly as he rifles through the piles upon piles of supplies that they've accumulated from raiding the mall. It's only occurred to them very recently that having all this stuff might be a hassle, since they still have to leave the relative safety of the offices over the Core at some point. "Also, the Battering Ram was falling apart."

Rose snorts. "Oh, shut up. That's only because you smashed the bumper against a tree."

They've been looking through the supplies for hours, sorting everything into categories while Ciel and Ain pretend not to flirt, Elesis and Ara actually flirt, and Lu plays with Dynamo in an attempt not to fifth-wheel. It's been slow business, but Rose has the strongest proper survival training and Add has the best memory of the potential Alteran dangers, so here they are, fighting the greatest boss of all: packing.

Somehow, Add doesn't feel like it's all that great of a battle to go out in.

"Where did you put the rest of Lu's clothes?" he asks, wrestling a very small sweater out of a stack of granola bars. It feels like polyester, though, and Lu is very strictly anti-polyester and pro-cotton. _Prissy rich kid standards._ "Is it by the water bottles?"

"I've just been throwing all the girls' clothes in a pile over there," Rose says, frowning as she points to a weird lump of fabric in a corner. "Since Ara and I are basically the same size anyways."

 _Ara_. Her name alone brings Add back into a world of guilt, a well he doesn't think he'll ever climb out of. Rose notices this for sure, because she clams up immediately. "I'm sorry, was that—"

"It's alright." Add does not feel alright in the slightest. "She's not available, I'm just dumb, and I shouldn't have kissed her. End of story."

Rose purses her lips, which means she's about to do the Rose Thing where she pretends not to give a shit, actually gives a shit and lays out all his issues for him. It's becoming a recurring theme since they started talking as friends and not just tech geeks bouncing ideas off each other while shittalking the failing infrastructure. "You're not over it," she says, "so no, not end of story."

"Great, thanks, Doc Testarossa, guess it's terminal."

"It'll eat you alive," she warns, even when Add gives her a pointed look about her own predicament. "Pardon if I'm going too far, but you've been quite starved of affection since your mother left you. You've bonded with Ara since she was the one to reach out to you the most."

Ara, Ara, _Ara_. Beautiful, empathetic, kind Ara, who let him cry on her shoulder and let him kiss her before they ran for their lives and kissed him like he mattered after they survived. Ara, who gives her attention freely to everyone and only seeks it in return from one person. Add should have known better than to choose her arms to stumble into when he needed the support.

But here he is, impulsive and almost sick with emotion, and Rose is hitting home in all the worst places. "I hate to admit this, but you may have a point," he says slowly, tossing the sweater into the pile. "I'm not over it. Still. She's not available, I'm just dumb, and I shouldn't have kissed her. My point still stands."

Rose clicks her tongue and lobs a flashlight across the floor to join the growing pile. "Self-deprecation will get you nowhere."

"That's not what you said when you were moping over Elesis yesterday," he snickers. The words have their desired effect; Rose immediately turns as red as Elesis's hair. "Am I right, or am I right?"

"Oh, shut up." Rose deliberately flings a pair of socks in his direction. He manages to catch one, but the other decides to plant itself in his hair. "She's so kind, she put up with me talking about my nightmares—"

"We all have nightmares," Add interjects. "It's just that you two get the unique strain of nightmare that has to do with the bloodhounds. All the more to bond over, right?"

"Yeah, but I fell asleep, and she just stayed there and held my hands the whole time until she fell asleep," Rose insists, "I was this close to pulling a _you_ and kissing her right there."

Add scowls. "Don't call me out like this."

"You're the only one who shares my suffering. I am permitted by law to call you out." Rose shoots him a cheshire grin. "Unless you want me to let Lu in. I'm sure she'll be of great help."

"On second thought, nope, let's not go there."

It's a cold, cruel world out here, and Add is honestly kind of glad he's got friends as good as these guys around him. Even though he still hasn't been able to hold a not-awkward conversation with Ciel and Lu still teases him about his seafood allergy, they're close, closer than he was to any of his old friends from university or high school or even elementary. He's glad they haven't forsaken him already.

(But god, if the kiss doesn't _hurt_ , if it doesn't _haunt_ him, if he doesn't wish he could have _taken it back_ a million times-)

"Hey, Rose."

"Yeah?"

"Would you have to lean down to kiss Elesis, or would she have to tiptoe?"

"Oh, shut up."

* * *

 **A/N: solidarity in pining? solidarity in pining.**

 **i keep forgetting about WtWE because my mind's been in overdrive with ideas for fluffy angst lately so i bring to you the only solution: writing about the one thing i am familiar in**

 **also i love the dumb friendships i'm forming among these team members, like i'm waiting for a good chance to have some quality Elesis and Lu pranking the others and Ara chatting up a storm about religion with Ain**

 **(but then again, who am i to make those friendships last?)**

 **~Marg**


	41. Moonlight on the Bed (II)

Sunlight.

Ara blinks the blinding spots out of her eyes, or at least she tries. After nearly a week cooped up in the darkness of the Altera Core, her eyes aren't used to the light levels. Thank god they decided to go looking for sunglasses before they left.

While Ara stands at the entrance and takes in the surroundings as best as she can, Lu comes barrelling out, screaming "FREEDOM" as she pumps her arms into the air triumphantly. "Fuck Plato and his allegory of the cave," she declares, with the tone of someone who's had enough of philosophy. "Step aside, losers, Luciela's here!"

"Please keep it down for the rest of us," Rose groans, stepping over the rock pile at the base of the door. "And remember, there are still runners prowling around. The only reason we ended up in the Core was because we were chased there."

There's another soft groan as Add exits the building as well, shielding his eyes. He's got some sort of inherited eye condition, one that makes him a lot more susceptible to sunlight. As a result, he's shoved a black baseball cap over his unruly hair to keep the sunlight out a bit more. "It's way too early in the morning for this," he mutters, and goes to stand in Ciel's shadow, much to the taller man's amusement.

The last to leave is Elesis, who ruffles her own hair a bit and sighs contentedly with her hands on her hips. "Finally," she says dreamily, exhaling into the morning cold. Her breath puffs up and fogs upon her sunglasses. "God, I've been waiting for ages to get a breath of fresh air after all that zombie fart down in the parking lots."

Ara stifles a giggle as she leans over to peck Elesis on the cheek. "So you admit we moved up to the office tower because it smelled bad."

"No, I'm just saying that I got desensitized to it!"

"If I may interrupt." Ain looks somehow worse off than all of them combined. There are bags starting to show under his eyes, though the determination in his gaze takes away from it. "We should try and find the government facilities as quickly as possible. Add, could you-"

"Already on it." He rises from his squat and bounces back and forth on his heels to maintain his balance. With each of them sporting massive backpacks full of supplies, it's hard to stay on their feet sometimes. "We've got about a half day to walk, so, uh, don't drink all your water yet, I guess."

The sun's up, which means the runners in the city aren't active yet. Sunset is usually when they start getting antsy; by nightfall, it's no longer safe to step outside. Add leads them through some older districts, explaining the history behind certain buildings as he gestures wildly at their crumbling forms. It's like a darker version of a tour, seeing as the city's falling apart at every seam.

Ara's always been fond of suburban life. She grew up in a fairly large village in the Xin empire, and then settled right down in a townhouse when she moved to Sander. Seeing the ruins of the largest city in Elrios is somewhat disconcerting, and makes her miss the safety of her old bedroom more than anything.

"This is the old town," Add says as they enter what seems to be a large plaza. Once, it might have been decorated with flowers. If Ara looks closely, she can spot shriveled shrubs along the pathways. "Most of the old money people lived here. The, uh, Arkwrights, the people who did the whole COBO thing, their mansion should be down the street."

He freezes in the road, and Ara notices it immediately. "Add?" she calls, moving forwards to put a hand on his shoulder. He flinches to the touch. "You okay?"

"I'm alright, I just-" His gaze is glassy, like he's locked onto something. "You remember Eve? From Elsword's team? That's her old house."

Everyone follows the path his finger takes, and they all see the pile of charred rubble that lies in the distance. "Oh," is Ara's verdict.

"Yeah. We knew each other as kids," he says, before his voice drops into a low mumble. "I, uh, may have had a crush on her when I was seven."

Lu's eyes bulge out, and she starts to immediately cackle like a witch. Elesis isn't far behind, leaning on the side of the closest building while she gasps for air. "Oh my god," Lu hoots, "you had a crush on Adrian Nasod's daughter? For real? That-that's the funniest fucking thing I've heard all week!"

"Language," Ciel scolds, but even he's got a smile on his face.

"In my defense, I was seven." Add crosses his arms over his chest. "And besides, Adrian Nasod was a collaborator at the time with the HNR project. We were the only kids in that group, so naturally we got stuck together."

That puts a stop to the laughter immediately. "Adrian Nasod," Ain says faintly, "was a collaborator with Henir?"

"Well, yeah." Add scowls and kicks at the rocky rubble underfoot. "He dropped early in the project, though. Smart guy, didn't want it to stain him. My mom took me and left soon after that, too. I didn't even realize that was Eve until she tried to kill me."

Ara thinks about the shotgun that Eve kept at her side, and decides to stay very, very quiet.

"But anyways." Add straightens up a little, looks a little less anxious. "She said my dad went to her family home and infected everyone except her, so she blew up their mansion. In that case..." His voice trails off, and he looks like his mind is far away again. "I know we should get going, but-"

"Take your time." Elesis smiles at him kindly. "Closure, right?"

Add nods. "Closure," he echoes.

* * *

"Feeling better?"

There's a bit of a hesitant sway to Add's step as they trudge through stone and dirt. Ara's a little afraid that he'll tip over any moment now. "A little," he says quietly. "I found his body."

"That's..." She tries to think of a word for the situation, finds none, and gives up. "Did it make it a bit better?"

"Yeah." He shoots a tired grin at her, half-asleep in the late afternoon cold. "Nice knowing that the bastard died before my mom did. Serves him right, for what he did to her."

The government building is coming up ahead. It's very blatantly marked by the Elrian flag, or at least the faded, tattered remains of one, still at full mast. Add has warned them that there may be more dangers in the building than outside, and that they might not even be able to extract the files they want.

But it's worth a shot, right? There's still hope, and with that, Ara can keep going. She shoulders her bag a little more, and presses onwards. "Thank you," she says on an impulse. Add stares at her. "You didn't have to give the tour today. It really calmed us down, I think."

"That was just..." He gulps. "It was nothing. I'm glad you enjoyed it."

Rose and Lu have already gone ahead, armed with tools to pick the door. It seems so cruel that they've left one dark Eden, only to enter another. As Ara takes off her sunglasses ($19.99), she mourns the loss of sunlight again.

She misses it already.

* * *

 **A/N: today's chapter brought to you by what must have been the worst ib sl math exam in the history of ib sl math exams**

 **this arc is kinda inspired overall by the song _Sleepwalking_ by the Korean group Dreamcatcher. i love their concepts and stuff, and the edm touch on Sleepwalking really punched me into writing this.**

 **but on the flip side i'm exhausted lmao**

 **~Marg**


	42. Nirvana in Ice (II)

The first thing that greets them when the door of the government building swings open is flies, which is a good sign. Flies don't usually coexist with zombies, and prefer to zero in on areas with fresh, uninfected bodies. Ain counts it as a minor victory as he steps across the threshold and into the building, and takes a deep breath.

It smells like dust and mildew. Gross, but better that than festering flesh, anyhow.

"Add," he says, "which way to the lab?"

"Upstairs, probably." There's shuffling, as Add reaches into his bag and removes a flashlight. It flickers on, illuminating a lobby and a reception desk manned by the skeletal remains of a receptionist. "Uh, I've never actually been in here, since I spent every open house day studying indoors. We'll have to wing it mostly."

"Great." Ain takes his own flashlight out of one of his pockets. "Everyone, let's not get too far from the lobby until one of us has definitive directions to the labs."

While the others spread out through the floor, Ain checks the front desk for any sort of instruction. The papers behind the counter are badly faded, while the ones above are crumbling from the previous exposure to sunlight. He manages to pick up a few broken letters from one sheet, which seems to track visitors to the building. A faded sticky note is pinned to the inside of the counter space, alongside a photo of the receptionist's children.

Ain crosses himself and says a quick prayer. Zombies may be painful to see, but the worst of the victims are the ones who fell to natural causes.

There's a mechanical screech somewhere in the building, and then a jubilant yell. "I found it!" Elesis shouts. "I found the lab! It's in the basement!"

He drops the papers immediately and runs towards the sound of her voice. The hallways diverge and converge again, and then he runs directly into Ciel's back, and has to dig his heels into the ground to prevent an accident. The others are already crowded around the door, with Rose and Lu squatted next to the doorknob and picking at it with their tools.

"Let's get this open," Rose mutters, jostling the lock with a hairpin. "C'mon, now, usually the electronic ones aren't so fickle."

"Y'know, I could just pry the hinges open with a pair of chopsticks," Add offers.

"Oh, shut up."

The door creaks open, and Rose triumphantly kicks it open all the way. "After all of you," she says, gesturing into the doorway as she picks herself off the floor.

Ain doesn't hesitate to surge ahead of everyone else, slipping through the doorway and down the stairs, and shining his flashlight around. _Yes_ , this does appear to be a laboratory, and _yes_ , it does seem to be the place where the virus was studied in the few days before society fell. Joy swells up in Ain's chest as he brushes dust off a laptop and opens it to find paper notes hastily tucked inside, detailing the structure of the virus. "I think," he whispers, "I really do think we may have found it. The panacea is here."

He is then bombarded by no less than three people hugging him, but that just hides his tears as he buries his face in someone's shoulder and thanks God for sending him these wonderful people he calls his friends.

* * *

"The battery's gonna run out soon," Add informs him as he brings in a serving of today's lunch. It seems to be rice with some rehydrated fruits and some unknown flavouring that smells amazing. "You might need to finish quickly so that we can recharge."

"Thank you, Add. And I will." Ain barely takes his focus off the screen, watching the battery drop from twenty-three percent to twenty-two, and returning to parsing the notes.

It's amazing how far Altera's most dedicated scientists got before society fell. Ain has found tubes full of DNA from infected organisms, fresh out of PCR from a thermal cycler, as well as multiple printed electron micrographs of infected cells and even several of the HNR-926 virion itself. He opens a file, and nearly cries out of relief when _the entire genome_ of HNR-926 starts to patter out onto the screen in front of him. They got as far as mapping out _the entire genome._

Beyond that, it's mostly analysis, Ain remembers, with startling clarity, being lectured by Professor Ebalon on virology back in Elysion before he left for the rest of Elrios. Rumours had spread back then that Professor Ebalon was on the team making HNR-926 before its purpose went complete south. Ain hadn't believed them until his mother had told him that it was true.

Now, the holy grail opens. Everything he could ever want to know about HNR-926 lies in front of him, in the form of a database in a laptop in an abandoned government facility. He wants to laugh and show it all to Professor Ebalon.

Quietly, Ain copies the complete genome in its 2-bit file onto the USB flash drive he'd taken from an electronics store back in the Core. He may be no Add or Rose when it comes to technology, but he's scanned over the file properties, and thankfully, it's still shy of two gigabytes.

Still, that's _massive_ for a virus, and nothing short of what Ain's expected. A zombie virus, designed to turn a living body and make it undead, must be perfect in every way, and as such must be complex to a fault. As Ain shovels food into his mouth, the genome stares back at him, as if beckoning him to open its vast depths and analyze it in detail.

(Thankfully, Ain knows better than to lose himself in a genome when he doesn't even have twenty percent of his battery life left.)

He opens the notes he found tucked into the laptop. They seem to be handwritten, and haven't been faded by light exposure or the elements thanks to their shielded home. Several strands of the DNA of the virus have been copied out onto the sheets, comparing them to other viruses and noting their functions. _Enzyme_ , one reads, followed by a dark pen smudge and _protease, breaks down collagen in bones_. The enzyme is scribbled out in a rough pencil sketch, showing what might be an active site and a potential inhibitor.

What's most interesting to Ain is the number of other viruses that are imbedded within its genetic code. He skims through an entire page of tightly-packed ebolavirus notes, on how its genes are scattered across the genome, and on how the way some of the sticky ends are put back together weirdly with other genes. He finds half a page on influenza and its airborne properties, and another three-quarters page on rabies, and two whole pages on HIV and its rapid spread within the body. Not all of the contributing viruses have antiviral medication that works against HNR-926, though—it's practically pure luck that the virus carries antigens similar to those of influenza, ebolavirus and rabies. Whoever wrote these notes must have been greatly dedicated to the cause, toiling tirelessly at the pages before evacuating the building or being infected or dying to other causes.

He stretches languidly in his seat before reaching for his flashlight and taking another lap around the lab room. Most of the samples are lying in wait in the isolation chamber, which he really doesn't have the courage to open just yet. The few samples in the heat cycler are only segments, chopped-up genes that can't do anything on their own. In one corner of the room, a laptop sits untouched, with several sticky notes decorating its lid. _Collaborators_ , one reads.

"Huh." Ain unplugs it from its useless port—no point, anyhow, since the power has been dead for three years—and hooks it up to the battery from the Battering Ram that stands at seventeen percent. He cracks it open, and lo and behold, it's both functioning _and_ doesn't even need a login. _Double score_.

This laptop has a file open, named _collaborators_ as the sticky note indicates. No encryption, just a solid Word document of names, occupations, addresses, even marital statuses. Judging by how many blocks are left unfilled, it looks like it was thrown together in a haste.

Ain opens it.

 _ **Instigator**_

 _ **Otto Henir**_ — _former professor at University of Western Fluone in Hamel. Contracted by Elrian government prior to war of year XXXX to create biological pacifying agent._

 _Marital status—Divorced, one biological child (STATUS UNKNOWN)_

 _Address—El Temple Apartments, Feita, suite 901_

 _ **Direct collaborators**_

 _ **Asker Grenore**_ — _former professor at University of Elder. Working under Otto Henir from beginning of HNR-926 project, prior to war of year XXXX._

 _Marital status—Divorced, one biological child (SPOUSE FILED FOR DIVORCE DUE TO DOMESTIC ABUSE)_

 _Address—unknown._

 _ **Grace Grenore**_ — _former professor at University of Elder. Worked under Otto Henir from beginning of HNR-926 project. Dropped from project prior to end of war of year XXXX._

 _Marital status—Divorced, one biological child (DIVORCED SPOUSE DUE TO DOMESTIC ABUSE)_

 _Address—Suburbs of Elder, township of Twin Watchtowers_

 _ **Artemis Ebalon**_ — _professor of meteorology at University of Elysion. Worked under Otto Henir from beginning of HNR-926 project. Dropped from project prior to end of war of year XXXX._

 _Marital status—Married to one_ _ **Eliza Solace**_ _._

 _Address—Elysion city downtown_

 _ **Elena Ishmael**_ — _doctor of medicine in Elysion, formerly in Hamel. Worked under Otto Henir from beginning of HNR-926 project. Dropped from project prior to end of war of year XXXX._

 _Marital status—Divorced, one biological child ( **Ainchase Ishmael** )_

 _Address—Suburbs of Elysion, township of Judge's Sanctuary_

Ain's eyes go wide. Why would his mother's name be here? Was she a collaborator on the HNR project from its beginning? And why did she drop out halfway through?Was it because of the father he remembers nothing of?

 _Well, clearly, she was a collaborator_ , he tells himself mentally, scrolling through the database. A few more names pop up as those who funded the project—Adrian Nasod, Abraxas and Elenora Sourcream, Seven Tower Industries—but those flicker away in a heartbeat. The fact remains that Ain's mother was once on the project of HNR-926, and she never revealed this to him.

 _Why?_

Before he can look further into it, though, there's a knock at the door, and Elesis pokes her head in. "Yo," she greets casually, "we found some _funky_ mold growing in the corner, and long story short it's kinda growing. You wanna come deal with it?"

Ain sighs in exasperation and puts on his Paramedic Certified Smile™. "I'll be there in a moment."

He ejects the USB from the first laptop and hesitates for a moment before tucking it into his jacket pocket. If there are secrets his mother wants to keep, she probably has her reasons for them. He'll get his answers eventually, if he waits long enough.

For now, he slips the written notes into his backpack and throws the strap over his shoulder.

The virus will still be here tomorrow. He'll solve its secrets himself, if it kills him.

* * *

 **A/N: all I can think of from that last line is a line from a fic I love (much ado by sad_goomy on ao3) that goes "ironically i think it's going to kill you when you find out"**

 **this is by far the most science i've had to drop in a chapter, and there's still so much about the virus i haven't explored yet! here's a rough explanation of the most sciencey parts, for my friends who haven't suffered IB biology with me:  
**

 **\- viruses are basically just chunks of genetic material, be it DNA or RNA. they hijack your cells, insert their genetic material, and then when your cells reproduce, they carry the viral DNA with them. so yes, viruses literally do change your genetic code.**

 **\- a genome is all the genetic material in an organism. while viruses are kinda under debate as to whether they qualify, the term "viral genome" isn't inaccurate.**

 **\- the 2-bit format is one of the few generally accepted for storing genomes. genetic material is stored in patterns of nucleotide bases, which is a funky way of saying "four chemical compounds string themselves together and we can read that to make things". in the 2-bit format, each nucleotide base is stored in 2 bits of memory. this means that you can have a genome of 20000 bases (the smallest viruses) in about 10 bytes (source: my classmates)**

 **\- the enzyme mentioned, a protease, breaks down the protein collagen, which keeps your bones together. this is my way of explaining how zombies are so fragile.**

 **\- PCR/polymerase chain reaction is a method of heat-cycling fragments of DNA to replicate it very, very quickly**

 **\- antigens are basically how your body can identify pathogens (foreign substances), they're like little tags that your white blood cells can identify and subsequently seek and destroy**

 **in all honesty though, this was really fun to write! i may hate the IB biology course but i love virology as a discipline and i might be going into it as a field of study in the future**

 **~Marg**


	43. Qui Vivra Verra (II)

It takes a while for Ain to rejoin them, but when he does, he's brought along a stack of papers, untarnished by the elements. "I have news," he says, and Rose can tell he's deliberately not attaching any adjectives for a reason. "I was able to print a copy of the genome, instead of having to copy it out by hand like I was going to."

"We have a whole untarnished USB drive," Add points out, "and you want to copy out a whole viral genome by hand?"

"When I left ELIA, we didn't have any computers able to read USB drives yet," Ain says, frowning, "so this is the next best thing. I'll still bring it along, but… I can't guarantee we'll have the technology to access it." He smiles for a moment, lost in thought. "Think of that. Elrios was once the apex of technology. Now, we can't even scrounge a computer that can still read a USB."

"Tragic, isn't it?" Elesis leans back in her seat, puts her arms behind her head, and closes her eyes. "Oh, how the mighty have fallen."

As the others fall into friendly banter, Rose sits next to Ain and peers over his shoulder. Aside from the genome, he's been able to print a few other documents and salvage other handwritten ones, and barely lets any of them out of his grasp. Who wouldn't, given his situation? The possibility for an actual cure now exists in his hands, and should he lose it, they lose a potential future.

Thankfully, Rose did not take biology in her teenage years and barely understands the notes anyways.

"There's still a lot of questions I have left," Ain mumbles, flipping through the notebook that he grips like a lifeline, "and I'm afraid I'll never have them answered."

Rose looks for words to offer him, and finds none. "It's alright," she ends up saying. "We all do."

Dinner finishes cooking, and Ciel turns off the burner and judges Lu's attempt at heating up the split pea soup "adequate". They eat heartily nonetheless, because it's dinner and it's warm and it's better than the days when there was nothing. Rose spoons soup into her mouth and mashes the peas under tongue, and remembers a day when she was wholly prepared to die from malnutrition and thirst. She's lucky that she has people who care for her and help her find food, now. God knows what kind of emotional hell she would have dragged herself into had she continued alone.

"So," Ara says, scraping up the last of her soup and eating it, "where to next?"

Slowly, everyone turns to Elesis, who is pretending that the frayed edge of the chair she occupies is entertaining. "Um." She still doesn't meet anyone's eyes. "I, uh, haven't thought about that part yet, to be honest."

Everyone stares.

"In my defense, I don't usually plan more than one journey ahead at a time," she says, raising her hands defensively.

Ara sighs. "To be fair, there was a time when we weren't even sure if we'd even survive a journey at a time." She kisses Elesis's cheek; Rose tries not to burn. "Don't worry about it. We can brainstorm together."

The silence cuts through the din, leaving only the sounds of Ciel rinsing food residue off the dishes and Lu wiping them with rubbing alcohol beside him. Ain drums his fingers nervously against the side of the table he's sitting on. Rose looks around for anyone who might want to speak, anyone at all.

No one does.

"If I might make bold," she says, and everyone snaps to attention instantly, "the base where I was situated had a lot of foreign technology, including a lot of the most recent models from Varnimyr."

She doesn't miss the way Lu flinches, but continues all the same. "We had some very lightweight laptops in the base, and a lot of medical equipment too. It might be worth the trip just to find some of those and haul them with us to Elysion if you're short on functioning technology."

Elesis leans forwards in her seat. "I'll bite. Rose, you were in the Rosso base, right? It shouldn't take more than a few weeks for us to trek to Sander on foot."

"We'll have to cross the Alteran Plateau," Add warns, not unkindly. "I don't know if the bridges down into the Fluone continent are still intact, but it'll be dangerous to get down either way."

Rose purses her lips in frustration. He brings up a very valid point, and it's definitely important enough that they can't ignore it. "Any detour options?"

"Actually, yes." They all turn to Ain, who sets down his notes in his lap and sighs. "I've been thinking about this a bit for the past few days, and to be honest, I don't know if any of you might agree with me. We can travel west instead and head for Lurensia instead."

"Why Lurensia?" Lu asks. "Won't that be more of a hassle, since we'll have to cross the Bethagara river again?"

"Not necessarily. There's a safer crossing behind the Bethagara falls that shouldn't have fallen to the elements yet," Ain explains. Rose just stares in confusion while the others make little sounds of joy at remembering. _The downside of being a foreigner, I guess._ "From there, we can head to… Feita."

He picks up his notes again. "Henir's lab was in Feita," he says. "We can find the source of the virus there, the place where it began. He's bound to have more notes on it than they do here. Sure, there is much that ELIA can do with just the genome, but we're still short on countermeasures. There has to be more notes. I'm sure of it."

"Then it's basically just a two-week trek from Feita to Sander, if we're crossing into Senace as quickly as possible," Elesis confirms. "Might need to stop by Hamel to restock our supplies. But it's a plan."

It's a loose plan, and that's better than what they usually have. Rose thinks back to the mall, and the feeling of being very, very small as the bloodhound clamped its jaws around Elesis's boot and began to pull her into the darkness. A loose plan means there's room for error. Rose is starting to think that might be better for them.

"So we're headed to Feita, then," Add says, stretching out languidly like a cat. This is punctuated by all of his joints clicking in SATB harmony. "When do we leave?"

"The day after tomorrow, at the latest." Elesis turns to glance at Ain. "Unless you want to stay longer to search for more information?"

Ain shakes his head. "I've already taken everything I could from here. I would take a laptop if I could, but…" He doesn't need to continue the thought. They all know a laptop would take up precious space for food and water.

Still, it's a gambit they're going to have to take. Survive another day, or ensure the continued survival of the human race? Rose can see the pains to which Ain has weighed his options, and understands in painful detail how the decision must burden him.

It's best that they move on before those thoughts swallow them whole, then.

"I'll begin charting the road ahead," she says out loud, moving away from the others to go find the mapbook in the lobby. Before anyone can voice their concerns, she's already slipped through the door and is pacing down the hall, pulling her flashlight from her pocket to illuminate the corridor ahead of her.

 _It's not your turn to shine yet_ , she reasons. There's still a long way to go before she can be their guide through the Rosso base. For now, she's content to watch from the sidelines, offering her assistance when it's needed and helping her friends survive the harsh environment.

(But oh, how tragic it is that she's so ready to be a side character in her own story for their sake.)

* * *

 **A/N: so sorry for the late upload, life got in the way**

 **but really it feels great to be back with WtWE! i mean i love writing Genesis but variety is the spice of life and i do miss my other characters a lot**

 **now that there's a foreseeable future planned out for these guys, i'm building up a lot of other events and things to happen along the way. i think it'll be fun once the squad meets their next addition to the team... but there's still a-ways to go before that.**

 **hopefully i'll remember to update on time next week!**

 **~Marg**


	44. Lost and Found (II)

Lu opens the door of the government building to a tuft of something white floating at her. She takes in a deep breath, tries to blow it away, but it lands on her nose and melts before she can locate it. It's cold.

It's snow.

"Guys!" She runs out into the street, raising her arms into the air. Her backpack clunks behind her, hitting her back, but she doesn't care. It's snowing, and that means it's finally winter, and that means the virus will die down and it'll be safe to breathe once again. "It's snowing! Oh, thank El! It's snowing, guys!"

She spins around and around and around in the street, her boots scuffling through the light blanket of snow that's fallen since the early morning. It already smells like winter, cold and almost steely and unlike anything else. The feeling of winter is something that Lu has learned to treasure, and she'll never forget the satisfaction of it.

Ciel emerges from the dark government building, squinting at the sun, and Lu practically tackles him out of sheer excitement. "Ciel! Look at all the snow!" she exclaims, clinging to him tightly.

"I see that." He sounds only mildly miffed; she can hear the amusement under his tone. "Please release my shoulders."

She just laughs, hops away, and goes to scoop snow off the ground and toss it in the air. It sparkles on the way down, catching the glint of the sun and lighting the world up in pastel rainbows. Lu has always liked this part of Elrios, the fact that it actually gets snow and cold unlike other places where she's stayed.

A short distance away, Add is scooping a handful of snow off the ground and clumping it together, breathing on it to make it compact and hard. He tries to throw it, and it ends up disintegrating in his face. "You dummy, it's powder snow," Lu shouts gleefully as he splutters and unsuccessfully tries to dust his jacket and face off. "Wait a night for it to harden, and then try again."

"Don't try again," Ain advises sagely, "we shouldn't risk getting sick from snow, just as we wouldn't risk getting sick from rain."

Elesis sticks her tongue out at him. "Oh, c'mon, Ain, it's the first real day of winter. We can loosen up a little, have a bit of fun. The virus is gonna be dormant from the cold, anyways."

"It's not the winter solstice yet!"

As per usual, Lu ignores this bit of information. It's not even _December_ yet, but here they are, trekking through the snow, watching the few zombies around move sluggishly. Lu expected this to happen sometime this week, watching the signs of the temperature dropping, and yet the real experience of walking outside in basically safe conditions is so relieving. Finally, she can breathe without fear of inhaling the virus or having a zombie spit directly into her mouth. She does so liberally, inhaling massive gulping breaths of fresh winter air to clear out her lungs.

The others leave her to her own devices, knowing that she's more than capable of keeping up despite being in her own little world at the moment. She climbs a piece of rubble and jumps down the other side, landing with a dull _thud_ in what might have been a flowerbed and sending snow up on every side. The hem of her pants are going to be wet if she keeps this up. She doesn't care.

Soon, she's joined by Elesis, who skips across the cobblestone and deliberately kicks an iron fence to rattle down all the snow on top with a _clang_. "Hey Lu," she says, and _oh boy_ , Lu can tell this is going to be a good one by the mischief in her tone, "do you want to prank someone?"

"I'm always down for a prank," is her automatic response, accompanied by a cheshire grin. Lu has always been proud of her creepy cheshire grins. "But whom to prank, that is the question."

Elesis hums pensively. "Ara's gonna make me, to put it lightly, sleep on the couch if I prank her, and frankly I don't want to be mean to Rose." Her eyes light up. "Let's prank the boys. Ain, Add, Ciel. And we can use the weather to our advantage."

This is too good to be true. Lu nearly cackles out loud. "Elesis, do you remember that one meme from Before—"

"Of the guy about to slam dunk snow on the other guy's head? The only iconic meme that's come out of southern Varnimyr from the first time it snowed in a hundred and fifty years?" Elesis looks almost malicious as she taps her fingertips together like some sort of cartoon mad scientist. "My dear, you are an _intellectual_."

This time, Lu _does_ cackle out loud.

* * *

"Where did you guys even get this much snow from?" Add demands, ruffling the snow off his new parka before slipping it back on over the older one. "Stop laughing, you two, I'm serious. How'd you get this much snow?"

"Oh, y'know," Lu says, as Elesis snickers, "outside."

"We've been indoors for _two hours_ setting up camp," Ain complains loudly, gesturing to the portable classroom they've taken their nightly shelter in. "How, pardon the language, the hell did you guys store so much snow nearby to the point where you could just dunk it over our heads?"

Ciel snorts. "The rain barrel," he says, and Lu feels herself grin because she _knows_ she's been found out. "You told me you pulled that one before."

Lu remembers telling him, and remembers even more clearly having done the deed. Ciel, thankfully, has omitted enough detail from his statement that no one will question it, but both of them still know fully well who Lu pulled the prank on. No one knows about her _real_ brother, and no one needs to know.

She wonders if he's still alive; after all, he wasn't the one who got expelled three weeks before eighth grade graduation and had to relocate to Elrios. She remembers that after Ciel found her in the alleyway, he told her that Empyrean and Varnimyr both got hit extremely hard by the virus, and that society in the other two nations crumbled faster than Elrios did.

Hopefully she'll find out someday. Besides, she doesn't miss the competition in the family. Her newfound family won't punish her for dunking snow on someone's head, or ground her for coming second out of two hundred in a tournament. Even Ain just shakes the snow out of his hair and flicks some at her good-naturedly. She likes being the baby of the team, if only because she gets absolutely spoiled by the others.

"Snow always stacks on rain barrels after a while," she explains to the others. "Especially if it's been snowing for a long time. When I saw the snow getting thicker as we kept moving north, I knew to tell Elesis to set up camp in a school where we could find rain barrels by the portables. Then it was basically game over for all of you."

Rose looks considerably amused by this as she reclines in a chair by the corner. "So you essentially threw our entire charted path off for the day to play pranks."

Lu gasps dramatically and presses a hand to her forehead. "My word," she exclaims, adopting an awful posh accent, "do I look like the type to play pranks?"

"It was me." Elesis leans back into the teacher's chair she's claimed and kicks her feet up onto a desk, even though Ara's scolded her three times about the dangers of doing exactly that while her chair has wheels. "You thought it was Lu, but it was me, Elesis."

There's dead silence for a second, and then Lu collapses with laughter, and even though the floor is cold she can't stop laughing. "Seriously, Elesis?" Ain asks bemusedly, which Lu only hears foggily through her own laughter. "Is this really the time?"

"Oh please, the week we met Elesis communicated exclusively in memes," Ara says daringly, and Elesis makes a strangled squawk. "It's the truth! How'd you even have the time to browse memes while you were in the military?"

"That's none of your business!"

Lu tries to sit up on the floor, and fails miserably on account of her endless giggles. Ciel rolls his eyes and helps her to her feet, but she sees the ghost of a smile under his mask. The others join in their own ways, teasing Elesis as she turns as red as her hair, or flicking the last of the melted snow from Add's hair, or getting started on starting up the stove to make dinner.

It's a good feeling. Lu likes being the baby of the family, possibly because she missed that opportunity with her biological family. Found families are much better, she thinks. It's the joy of sticking to these folks that makes her wake up in the mornings and smile at her circumstances instead of cursing her very existence on this miserable mortal plane.

(She thinks she could get used to that.)

* * *

 **A/N: hhh i'm great at keeping things on time, aren't i**

 **this week and the next are going to be hectic with my grade 12 graduation and summer job, so i apologize in advance should the next chapter also be late**

 **but! i finally got to play around with the Elesis and Lu friendship that i desperately crave because these two would honestly be prank buddies! found families are so, so important and i hope everyone reading this has a found family or will have a found family they love and can interdepend on**

 **i've also charted out much, _much_ more of this au in detail and lemme tell you, it gets pretty emotional, so i'm gonna be looking forwards to writing that**


	45. B-Side (II)

"I found the case," Chung calls as he emerges from the back of the house, waving the item in the air. "And yes, there are spare strings!"

Elsword visibly lightens up as the fabric is delivered into his hands. "Thank you so much, Chung. I owe you one."

"Thank me with some music," the other boy quips. "You said you could play the ukelele, you better deliver on that one."

Over by the kitchen counter where she's cleaning up, Rena snorts. "He absolutely can," she says with a wry smile. "I bought him his first ukelele for his fourteenth birthday. He snapped a string within the night."

"Rena, I thought we agreed to never speak of that again," Elsword whines, but there's no anger behind it. He tosses his feet up on the crumbling coffee table as he starts to replace the broken strings with the new ones from the case with practiced ease. "Besides, I learned a valuable skill from that incident, and you guys wouldn't be able to hear me play if I didn't."

The others return from their various tasks slowly but surely, congregating in the living room where Elsword has made his perch. Eve, in true Eve fashion, climbs the couch and sits on the backrest while she helps him tune the ukelele. Raven leans against the counter and sips his water. Aisha hugs a couch cushion to her chest. They pause. They wait.

Finally, Elsword strums it one last time, having deemed the tuning finally ready, and lifts it up to play. "Any requests? I mean, I need to know the chords, but I'm sure I can figure something out."

Rena smiles and settles into her chair a little more. "Play the lullaby that your mom used to sing you."

"Oh, that's a good idea." A chord this time, strummed on the wings of autumn faeries. "Do you know the lyrics, or should I sing it?"

"Go for it."

Elsword clears his throat.

 _"The sun has now gone away,_

 _the stars have come out to play._

 _Soft as the breeze,_

 _blowing the leaves around._

 _They don't make a sound."_

The little house, once so frozen and stagnant in the midst of the barren winter, is brought to life again. As if a candle has been lit in its forgotten chandelier, the living room flickers with warmth and light. Everyone holds their breath as Elsword quietly plays the haunting chords of a lullaby that has long slipped the world by.

 _"So heavy are your eyes,_

 _too sleepy now to cry._

 _Just wait and see,_

 _Sweet are your dreams, sweetpea._

 _And when you dream,_

 _forever, love will hold you, and keep you."_

His voice trickles to a stop, and it's nearly as if the light dies from the room and drains out into the dark night outside. The wind howls at the door, battering the windows with its icy arms. The feeling of autumn flame is replaced by the calm of winter snow.

"That was nice," Rena says, patting Elsword on the back, and what she really means is _I haven't heard you sing in so long that I barely remember what your singing voice is like_.

Elsword smiles, and says "thank you" in a very small voice, when really he means _I know, and I wish I had the strength to sing more._

"You should totally sing more often," Aisha says excitedly, reaching out to rest her hand on his arm. "But to be honest, I always thought you were a rap kinda guy."

"Oh my god, you were a Soundcloud rapper in the Before, weren't you."

This gets a blush out of him, along with a desperate flap of his hands. "Eve, I didn't even have a Soundcloud account in the Before!"

Chung gives him the side-eye. "Then how'd you listen to music, huh?"

"With normal music streaming websites, like every other sane person!"

As they bicker and laugh into the restless night, the world around them shifts again. The warmth died with the song; now, it lives again in their mirth. Chung surprises everyone by playing a few songs and providing accompaniment for at least two duets. Rena tries her hand at singing and is goaded into an encore. Even Raven participates, if only a little. It's like all the stars aligned to grant the team a single moment of joy, and despite the sounds of the ukelele and the laughter, relative quiet without the arguing. Elsword strums the ukelele, and thanks it for bringing his friends all together, if only for one night.

The night sighs, and relaxes.

* * *

 **A/N: soundcloud exists in wtwe!elrios and it is home to the mixtape that Add dropped when he was 15**

 **in all honesty i just want to write happy things with these guys, i've missed them a lot what with Genesis focused on Add and Ara and most of WtWE focused on Elesis's team. maybe i'll hop around and update a few other fics for a bit to get back to them**

 **also i'd like to say ahead of time that i'll be participating in a shipping week in a different fandom this month, so if i don't update this please don't panic. i am still alive just bumping around in a different place**

 **~Marg**


	46. In the Before (IV)

In every survivor, there is a switch that flickers on and off, a toggle that dictates the attitude and priorities of life. Eve has seen it in every single one of her companions; the cold demeanour that Chung drops when he's around her and the others, the growl that comes from low in Rena's chest when she faces off a zombie, the fire that burns differently in Elsword's eyes.

She has never seen this switch in herself.

Eve is watching, always watching. She watches during the beginnings of the war, when her father brings her to secret conferences and drops her off in the corner with the shy boy not two years older than her. She watches as the boy flinches when his father comes to collect him, watches as his mother flinches too. She watches as the other boy, the one with mossy eyes, clings onto his mother and never lets go, and never comes back. She sees this, and remembers it.

There's a lot to see in the house of a senator during a war, after all. Her father, Adrian Nasod, a kind man with a vision of peace on the surface. Eve sinks into the depths of that ocean and watches her father speak to foreign diplomats: _how goes the planning? Are there any more developments? How's Henir's lab funding? Does he need more?_

It is thus that Eve learns that children are not meant to be seen and not meant to be heard in the house of a senator, and children are not meant to see and not meant to hear _especially_ in the house of a senator. Her father conducts dangerous business, _illegal_ business, and even though she is only nine-turning-ten at the time she understands better than most of her peers that _normal people don't give money to genocidal scientists._

"Adam," she says, "why is Father doing this? People will die. His priority as senator should be to save lives."

"His priority is to save the lives of the Elrian people," her brother tells her. "Now hush, Evangeline. You should not be asking these questions."

Eve thinks about the shy boy who flinched, whose mottled scar looked out of place on his too-pale skin, and says nothing else.

War, Eve decides, is dumb. It leaves a once-lively girl quiet, and it turns her joy into ice and steel. There are whispers: _that's Adrian Nasod's daughter, the daughter of the senator. They say her father is funding the biological weapon. They say he's using cruel methods to make everyone keep quiet and keep it a secret._

And then something changes one day, and it's so abrupt that it feels wrong. Father yells over the phone, and says something awful to the man on the other side, something a nine-turning-ten year old should not have to hear. Eve forgets and forgets until Father comes to find her.

"I'm sorry, Evangeline," he says, and this time she can tell that he means it. There goes the switch, the subtle change from Senator Nasod to Father. "I know you heard a lot of those words, and I'm very sorry I had to say them."

"Does this mean you're not going to fund Mr. Henir any longer?" she asks, with all the worldly innocence that a ten-year old should have.

"It means the war is ending soon, and now I need to make many apologies to many people." He clutches his head and sighs; there comes the switch, the change back into the senator. "Then I will have to prepare for a war of my own."

When the war ends, Eve stops being a senator's daughter, and for that, she is grateful. The new population does not need a genius with a cruel streak as their representative in peacetime, so Father returns to being Adrian Nasod, the inventor. He works hard to erase the senator from his name, and honestly, with the money and the brains that he has, it's far too easy.

But Eve remembers.

She grows faster than most children do, though no one has grown much in wartime. She graduates top of her class in high school, just as her brother did, and enters the prestigious University of Altera, just as her brother did. There's hardly a moment to breathe between classes before she's being thrown into exams, and then her third year has barely begun when the Outbreak begins.

The streets are starting to descend into chaos when Eve packs her bag, leaves the library behind, and walks home. A woman brandishes a gun at her, thinking she's a zombie; she fixes her with a stare that is all too cold to _not_ be human, and the muzzle goes down. There's a riot starting up in the distance, but she pays it no attention.

(The lines between reality and the nightmare were blurred long ago for her, anyways.

A war is no place for a girl who is nine-turning-ten and watching the world fall around her.)

The first week after the Outbreak is too normal. Father calls, says she should come home, but the mansion in the old part of town stopped being home when she stopped needing one. The phone line dies about a week after that, and then Eve starts to run out of fresh produce and starts to add beans to her diet, and then the week after that her neighbour dies to a zombie wandering the hallway.

The week after that, Eve decides to go visit her parents, see how it's going. She packs a backpack, expects a journey of at least two hours even though her parents only live fifteen minutes away, and grabs several kitchen knives, if only because she doesn't think she'll need them again.

She finds the broken remnants of her family scattered across the house, each falling to pain and the most horrid distortion of their bodies. Mother is convulsing on the bathroom floor, foaming at the mouth; Adam's skin is already a terrible mottled blue-grey, dark and rotting in stark contrast with his golden eyes. Only Father remains lucid enough to speak, and even then, there is a faint circle of green that looks suspiciously like a bite mark on the massive lump on his shoulder.

"Asker, he tricked us," Father mutters. "He told us there would be an antidote! He could supply it!"

"No, he tricked _you_ ," Eve says, and runs.

She's smart, in that way. Even if her room is only a temporary escape, it protects her from the fate that has befallen her parents and her brother. They can't bite her, and the moss-covered zombie in the kitchen stays in the kitchen, laughing.

Eve remembers a name, and that name is Edward. She connects it to the moss-zombie in the kitchen, whose name is Asker. Yes, that sounds right; the shy boy who was too pale and never cried and had stitches running up and down his face, his name was Edward. Asker was his too-rough father; Grace, his too-kind mother. She listens to Father's deaf ramblings, and the story comes together: _he was a collaborator, he promised to bring Father an antidote to the zombie virus that Henir made, and he lied._

Eve watches, and watches, and watches until she cannot watch any longer.

Breaking open the pipes is easy enough. Seeing how much natural gas is left in them is not. She remembers hearing someone say that the natural gas lines in Velder blew up, taking the city out with them. Altera is, for the most part, powered by electricity entirely, but in the oldest parts of town, there are still houses that run on natural gas.

Eve watches the house fill with gas, and she watches Asker laugh in the kitchen, and she watches as her parents and her brother crawl to the window. "I will live," she says, lighting a match. "And I will find my answers, from Edward or otherwise."

She throws the match through the window, and walks away before the explosion can singe her hair and burn her feet.

(Eve watches as the world burns around her, and yet that switch never once flickers to the other side.)

* * *

 **A/N: *laughs nervously* it's been a while**

 **i'm awfully sorry for the lack of updates all around. i started my summer job (who would have thought i could hold an office job) and also sold my soul to fire emblem three houses (resulting in a fic plan doc that is now about 9.5k words long). we'll be heading into an interesting arc after this and i'm _hoping_ to return to regular monday uploads this time. by god i will finish this darn fic**

 **if you squint hard enough you'll realize that i absolutely did not reference my ages chart for some past chapters, and some characters have their sense of time messed up. that's okay because so do it. that's just time babey**

 **also you can rip badass Eve out of my cold, dead hands**

 **~Marg**


	47. Hollow of Lethe (I)

Elesis slams the door and throws her back against it, exhaling in relief. "Well, outside is still a shitshow, so I don't recommend leaving this house anytime soon," she reports, sliding down the door with the crazed, exhausted look of someone who's been chased by unspeakable evil. "UGh. And it looks like it's gonna rain, too."

"Great," Ain sighs, gingerly unwrapping a strip of dark fabric from his wrist. "Ciel and Ara are resting, and Rose and Lu have headed out to that convenience store we spotted earlier."

"How long have they been out?"

Ain frowns. "Twenty minutes, maybe?"

That's good, and they both know it. A convenience store run doesn't usually take too long; Elesis has instilled a _take more shorter trips than a single long trip_ mentality in her team members for everyone's safety, and it shows. That, and her estimate on travel time to and from the convenience store, mean that she shouldn't be getting antsy over their safety just yet.

But she is, and the zombies that line the murky streets outside aren't helping her case.

The journey across Altera barely took them two days on foot, even with the constant snow in their eyes. It's much easier to walk when you're not holding your breath to avoid the virus, after all. Getting through the Bethagara tunnel was a little harder, but Elesis feels like that first breath of fresh air when they emerged into the light was definitely worth the trouble.

Feita, on the other hand.

If the Outbreak is an earthquake of catastrophic proportions, then Feita is the epicentre. Elesis tries very hard not to refer to it as the eye of the storm, because that would imply that Feita is calm and undamaged and not nearly as horribly violent as it is. As they approach the city proper, the virus starts to manifest in progressively crueler and crueler ways, and it shows in the unholy types of zombies that have attacked them.

She finds it funny that they haven't encountered a single walker zombie yet since they arrived on the outskirts of Feita. Runners and kindergarteners ambush them in droves, while half-broken crawlers bite at their ankles and scrape their teeth against raw cobblestone. That's how Ain injured his wrist, earlier, nearly having had his garden shears ripped from his hands by a rabid crawler with too much strength for anything undead, before Ciel put three bullet holes through its face.

And God, the rain.

With no meteorology training under her belt, Elesis has no way to predict the weather, but she definitely should have seen this coming. Altera, up on its plateau, is at a higher altitude than Feita, so where it was snowing there, it's absolutely pouring buckets here. This comes as both a benefit and a detriment: for a few hours after every clean rainfall, the area is mostly virus-free, but if they walk out in the rain, they run the risk of getting sick and catching it anyways.

So now that they've finally found a safe shelter to pass the night (a tiny house in the suburbs that might have once been a home) and cleared the zombies off the lawn, Add has been going around to all the windows, boarding them up so that the rain doesn't drizzle through. Ara is passed out on the couch, slumped over a worn pillow with Dynamo napping on her back, and Ciel has fallen asleep over an office chair in the corner. When things are safe like this, the sound of rain drumming down on the roof is the only thing that isn't stranger to their ears.

She's only hoping now that Rose and Lu will return quickly from their convenience store adventures, and preferably with snacks.

"How's your wrist doing?" she calls, prompting Ain to look up. He's got a tube of ointment, and is currently trying to screw the lid on with one hand. "Do you want some help with that?"

He shakes his head. "I'll be fine." As if to prove his point, he screws the lid on and tosses it back into his open bag. "To answer your first question, I'm recovering well. Ciel helped me tie it in place earlier, so it shouldn't swell up." The vacant look in his eyes tells Elesis that his thoughts are probably far away again, in Elysion with his mother or in that lab in Altera.

If there's anything that Elesis is afraid of for Ain, it's the faraway look in his eyes. She's scared that one of these days, it'll get him killed, and then her team will fall to pieces and she won't be able to do a thing about it. It could happen with any of her team members, at any given point, and with every step she takes she has to swallow down a capsule of regret that melts like snow in her stomach and leaves her nauseous for hours.

Will it be Ciel's silence that leaves them all feeling endless shame if he disappears without a trace? Will the enthusiasm that carried Lu all this way be her undoing as she teeters on the edge and is snatched up in zombie jaws? Will Add's perfectionist streak spell his end and theirs as he throws himself down as a sacrifice to save the rest of them? Will it be Ara's kind maternal instinct protecting them to the last as she throws her body down as a shield? Or will Rose, selfless and absolutely _stupid_ when it comes to self-preservation, hold her breath through fire just to push the others through those last few steps to safety?

At the end of the day, Elesis looks at herself, and she knows _exactly_ what her fatal flaw is. While the others fight because they're selfless and bold, Elesis fights because she's selfish. She _knows_ she can't bear the thought of losing any of her friends, much less actually losing them, so she fights to save herself the agony. One of these days she'll exhale freezing steam into a morning sky like a puff of smoke, and it'll take her last breath with it, and then she'll finally be released from this purgatory she dares to call Elrios.

She's instantly startled into reality when someone bangs on the door desperately, the sound rattling up her spine. Without thinking, she rushes to her feet, finding her balance with her baseball bat in hand, and opens the door to Lu clutching her shoulder in pain with a pack of zombies behind her. "Get in," she urges, pulling the younger girl in and slamming the door. "What happened? _Where's Rose?_ "

Lu collapses onto a nearby chair, breath shaky. "We got ambushed at the convenience store," she gasps, as Ain rushes to peel the parka covered in zombie blood from her shoulder and Ciel snaps awake instantly. Dynamo yowls at her, and she can only blink and reach out a shaking hand. "I nearly got taken away by one of them. Rose pulled me away in time. I think—I think I dislocated my shoulder."

Ain rummages through his pack wordlessly and eventually brings out a flashlight, offering it to her. It takes Lu a moment before she takes it, gripping it in her free hand tightly enough to burst. "Relax your shoulder," he says, and twists.

The scream that spills from Lu does not sound human.

"Uh, I hate to be the harbinger of bad news," Add shouts, running in from another room with a hammer in hand, "but I literally cannot find Rose from any of the windows. Lu, where'd she go?"

"She went to distract them so I could escape," she whimpers. "I don't know where she went."

 _Rose, selfless and absolutely stupid when it comes to self-preservation—_

Elesis swears violently under her breath and hefts her baseball bat over her shoulder. "Woah, woah, _woah,_ " Add says, throwing out an arm in front of her. "The house is surrounded. You're going to get eaten alive."

She fixes him with the coldest stare she can muster, and he backs down. "What choice do I have? To let Rose just _die_ out there?"

The words die on her lips just as quickly as they came. At the end of the day, the truth is that she has walked through fire with Rose. She owes her life to Rose's quick thinking in that elevator shaft.

She _cannot_ fail her now.

Ara comes over and lays a hand on her shoulder. "Elesis," she says softly, "do you want us to come with you?"

Elesis shakes her head. "It's safer in here," she says, and what she really means is _I can't lose all of you now._ "I'll find her." She pauses, running the nightmare scenario. "If we don't return, don't come searching for us until the sun comes up again tomorrow."

"Your pistol's not going to be enough," Lu warns, and the blood on her parka serves as testament to her words. "If you go out there with just your bat and your pistol, they'll tear you to pieces in an instant."

The pieces click, and Elesis turns to Ara, a request unspoken on the tip of her tongue. Before she can even find a fraction of the courage to ask, Ara pushes her assault rifle into her hands, and her face is something of a crossfire between a stillborn smile and a dying star. "Go," she whispers, and in that moment Elesis is grounded in reverence and shame.

But there's no time to waste. She shakes off the roots that bind her down in fear, and when she inches the door open, the zombies outside don't look so terrifying. "Alright," she says, feeling much too brave for someone who's only had four hours of sleep, "let's do this."

She throws the door open, and runs out into the rain.

* * *

 **A/N: welcome to "marg has gone apeshit with prose", we're all suckers for angst here**

 **i've been waiting to unleash this arc for a while, since it combines my favourite parts of writing: science/worldbuilding and absolute emotional destruction. imagine me sitting at my desk, drinking a london fog and pretending to be a suave mfer while tears stream down my face. that's basically my thought process while writing at any given time**

 **also i do want to make a clear warning that by the end of this arc everyone will have a list of injuries that will not heal overnight. this fic is rated M for a good reason. please exercise caution as we proceed into the next few chapters.**

 **~Marg**


	48. Hollow of Lethe (II)

Rose can't breathe.

She hasn't dared to take a breath since she wrenched Lu away from a zombie's unforgiving grasp, since she heard the younger girl's shoulder click sickeningly in the aftermath. "Run," she'd yelled, and threw Lu in the general direction of their camp, and stood her ground.

And now she's really done it, they've chased her across town and she's running alarmingly low on ammunition. The environment has provided her with some natural weapon—she's still thankful that stop sign was broken in half where it was—but it's raining, her hands are slick with zombie rot, and the world around her just seems to be too cruel to let her last. She's running out of time, and if the grey of the horizon is any indication, she'll probably be a tattered skeleton by this time tomorrow.

(She hopes her friends won't have to find her corpse.)

Something snarls nearby, and she screams and swings the stop sign at it. The glossy scarlet of the sign is already splattered with decaying black, and she redoubles that as the sign catches the runner across the face and turns it into a smear against the wall. Another one takes its place just as quickly though, and grabs onto her newfound weapon and _yanks_. She lets go, and the zombie stumbles sideways and is crushed under her feet.

Then she's moving again as another zombie swings a mangled hand at her, and something nips at her heels like nails scraping on a chalkboard, and she manages to slip through the gap between rotting bodies and death to find an open stretch of ground. Her lungs are are burning, her skin feels like it's about to blister, but for that moment, she _dares_ to call herself alive.

She ducks behind a fallen wall and checks her pistols. She's afraid to use the few bullets she still has left on her person, and pistol-whipping the local zombies has done nothing but cover her weapons and hands in zombie slime. The bottoms of her boots are gunked up from kicking and thrashing. There is one full magazine left in her pocket, and she's not sure if she'll have time to load it.

 _No time like now._ Rose swears under her breath as she hits the release and lets the empty clip clatter to the ground. Her pocket is torn and frayed and covered in zombie blood, but it's still intact, and the full magazine left inside is unsullied. The only problem now is that her gloves are beyond dirtied, and there's way she'll be able to get the magazine into her pistol without jamming it with blood.

There's a growl, and she's immediately on guard, even with her pocket full of precious cargo. A zombie leaps at her from a nearby storefront, and she pulls out her still-loaded pistol and puts one, two, three holes in its head, fully intending to make it a fourth when her pistol gives a hollow cough that tells her it's empty. The zombie lurches, and Rose is left very aware that she's effectively unarmed, with her pistols both emptied and her feet rooted in shame and exhaustion—

Then a baseball bat clangs out against the zombie, and Elesis is there in all her brilliant crimson glory. "What were you thinking?" she demands, mashing the zombie to an angry nothing beneath her bat. Rose spots the assault rifle hanging at her side, and nearly chokes, because that's _Ara's_ assault rifle and Elesis brought it here to rescue her. "Rose, you can't just throw your life away like that!"

"I—"

She gulps.

In all honesty, she might have made it back easily if she'd gone with Lu. Granted, there would have been a pack of zombies on their tail, and they'd both spend the rest of the night sore and injured and brutally awake. Now Elesis is out here too, and they're both in danger, and the others won't know if they're alive until they return.

"I couldn't put you all in danger," Rose whispers, and by the way Elesis's eyes flicker in dangerous vermillion and gold, Rose knows she can hear the lie.

"Well, all's well that ends well. We need to find shelter, and fast." Elesis squints at the empty magazine on the ground, then at Rose's bloodstained gloves. "Jeez, you done any grappling with zombies lately?"

Rose ends up giving both pistol and magazine to Elesis, who loads the gun in the rain and hands it back to her. "We should wait out the rain, it's too muddy to try and run back now," the other girl decides. "There's a strip mall nearby that we can try for shelter."

At least the strip mall has a tarp overhead that keeps them out of the rain. Rose hugs her middle as Elesis rattles on the doors, and tries not to feel miserable. It's really just her luck that they'll have to spend the next hour of so like this, while Elesis is clearly upset with her for making such rash decisions.

 _What were you thinking, stupid girl,_ she chides herself, _trying to tamper with fate like that? You should have learned your lesson when you suffered those years in military school alone._

Clearly no lessons of the sort were learned. Rose sighs.

"Pizza store's open," Elesis calls, and Rose immediately runs to join her. "The door locks, but the windows are shattered, and we have no light."

"Better than nothing." Rose shuffles around a little in her jacket until she can reach her flashlight without dirtying her clothes. "And I have this, but I can't guarantee it'll last long enough."

The pizza store smells of musk and decay, which is all too typical for your standard post-Outbreak restaurant. Rose clicks her flashlight on and swings it around, taking in all the surroundings. The tables and booths seem to be mostly unharmed, while the chairs are mostly strewn around and left to decay in the moisture.

They lay out their weapons on a table, and it's only darkness that masks their fear. Between the two of them, they have Rose's one pistol, Elesis's pistol and baseball bat, and Ara's assault rifle. It'll be risky for them, especially with those broken windows. Night is falling, and in the shadows, it's nearly impossible to foresee an incoming zombie. Their best bet at survival is hacking it back to camp as quickly as possible.

But then exhaustion fills Rose's lungs instead of oxygen, and she can barely slump into a booth before her legs give out under her. "Rose, stay with me here," Elesis says, bringing their weapons over. "Shit. I didn't bring any food or water."

"S'alright." Rose tries to find it in herself to smile, but can't. "I'm sorry for putting us all in danger like this."

Elesis looks stricken. "Hey, it's alright. We've got each other, don't we?" There it is, that signature Elesis grin that could light up even the darkest night. "We're gonna wait the rain out, and then we'll get back to camp and get thoroughly scolded by everyone else, and then we'll be alright again."

And yet her fingers coil around the grip of her baseball bat, bloodied glove against bloodied tape. There is fear quavering in her voice and in her gaze. "How do you find such positive things to say despite all the chaos?" Rose asks. "You're just as scared as I am of the zombies. Where are you finding the strength to tell me to be less scared?"

"Ah." The grin fades into something a little less confident, something a little more fond. "You and I both, Rose, we were once willing to put our lives down for our nations. Now look at us both, trembling and soaked to the bone in a dingy, beat-up pizza joint in Feita." She scoffs. "Sheesh, we're not even in Feita yet. Downtown's still at least a week out."

Rose frowns. "Pizza… joint?"

Elesis waves an errant hand. "Figure of speech. Anyhow, I think our military days have messed us up in different ways." She pokes her pistol experimentally, as if it'll help her point. "I have this terrible problem where I can't rest until all of you are safe and sound."

"And me?"

Even in the half-light of the forgotten restaurant, Elesis's gaze is haunting. "You're selfless," she breathes, and Rose feels herself go very, very red. "I'm sorry if I seemed upset earlier. I'm just… frustrated, I guess, that you seem to have so little regard for your own life to save someone else's."

Rose shrugs, because it's the only thing she can muster. "Old phrase my sisters used to tell me," she says, " _the soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him_."

The rain continues to drum down onto the tarp outside, and light slowly fades altogether as the sky slowly closes its lonely eye to sleep, but inside, Rose has never felt more at peace. When Elesis puts her palm up on the table, it's almost second nature for Rose to slot their fingers together, and by god if her heart doesn't flutter when she looks up to see the tint in Elesis's face.

"Please tell me if this makes you uncomfortable," Rose says quickly, but the other girl shakes her head. "Anything. Please."

"I'm okay, Rose." Elesis lays her free hand on top of Rose's, and in that moment Rose swears she's going to drown in her smile. "It's gonna be okay."

Except things are very not okay immediately, as the last of the light from outside fades entirely and a mangled zombie hand hooks itself around Elesis's shoulders and pulls _._

Elesis screams, prying the fingers off, but the zombie pops up behind her, ready to destroy her for her inattention. "Duck," Rose yells, and Elesis does so, pulling the zombie with her. The emancipated body sails through the air in a bloodstained arc, and crashes onto the table in time for Rose to bring the baseball bat down through its windpipe.

"Where did that zombie come from?" Rose gasps as Elesis shucks off the remains of the intruder and takes her baseball bat. "Are there zombies in the back?"

She gets her answer instantly as something grabs her by the collar and literally drags her out of her seat. Rose flails through nothing, screaming and kicking out, and eventually she reaches the slimy claw on her back and _rips_ it downwards, hearing her hood tear along with it. Something snaps in her grip, and she lets go of the now-broken wrist as the feeling of teeth start to scrape against her gloves.

They emerge from the darkness in little spurts, rushing at her and Elesis while they're unaware. Night has fallen, and with it, order of any sense. Rose swings her leg around to roundhouse the zombie's head to the wall, letting it squelch its way down to the floor, and immediately has to wrestle another one for custody of her sleeves. Some part of her offers advice from taekwondo, how the elbow is the strongest part of the body, and she uses it to crush another zombie's neck and snap its collarbone into three pieces.

She's so preoccupied with keeping the zombies off herself that she nearly doesn't register Elesis's scream, and by the time she turns around, there's already another one pouncing as Elesis falls. "Hang on!"

Her jump-kick sends the zombie's head flying off its neck. As the body stumbles away and falls to pieces, Rose grabs her pistol off the table, plants her feet next to where Elesis is curled up on the ground in pain, and shoots wildly into the darkness, picking off as many of the zombies as she can before she grabs the baseball bat and swings the rest of them off without abandon.

There is blood dripping down her sleeves, black blood that is not her own. Her pistol is considerably lighter than before. Elesis's bat is sticky to the touch.

Behind her, Elesis coughs, and the reality comes flooding back. "Elesis," Rose chokes, dropping to her knees. The other girl is clutching her leg, and while there don't seem to be any bite marks or scratches, Rose is scared. "What happened? Did you twist something?"

Elesis nods. "Popped my knee," she gasps. "I'm so sorry. Are you okay?"

"Forget about me," Rose snaps, and immediately feels guilty when Elesis shrinks. "The pizza shop seems to be free of zombies for now, but night's fallen. We won't be safe for much longer."

And she hates it, she hates the fact that Elesis looks so scared now, that even though she has words and a smile to fool herself, her eyes still give her away. Rose thinks of the moment in the rain when she was frozen and Elesis came running to save her, and makes a split second decision. "Wait here."

She finds her ripped hood still in the hands of the zombie that took it from her, and rips it into thin strips that she ties together. "I'm gonna reset your knee," she says, kneeling at Elesis's side, "and then I'm going to put you back in that booth, and you are going to sleep it off. Alright?"

"Rose—"

"That's an order." It pains her to have to bring back _that_ voice, but it works, and years of Pavlovian conditioning on a spartan level make Elesis shut up immediately. "You need rest. I'll keep us safe."

Before Elesis can say anything else to protest, Rose grabs a hold of her calf and just over her kneecap, and clicks the joint back into place. Elesis whimpers out in pain, and Rose immediately moves to tie her knee down with the strips of fabric. "Ready?" she asks, and when she gets the tiniest of nods she moves to scoop Elesis up beneath her back and legs and deposits her gently in the booth.

Two pistols, one running on empty. A baseball bat. An assault rifle that belongs to neither of them. Rose surveys the restaurant thoroughly one last time, kitchens and all, makes sure there are no more bodies that could spring up on them, and finally takes her place at the broken window.

She takes one last wistful look at Elesis. Maybe it's the shock starting to set in, but the other girl is staring at her with such a haunted gaze, arms wrapped around her middle with her leg propped up. She catches Rose's eyes, and smiles, or at least tries to.

Rose forces herself to tear her gaze away.

After that, the night disappears into a blur. Zombies approach at the windows, and she shoots because it's the only thing she knows to do. Her pistol runs out of bullets within the hour; Elesis's follows shortly after that, and then it's Ara's assault rifle that feels wrong in her hands, even though she was the one to train Ara to use it. The bullets fly much too quickly, each press of the trigger a burst of fire that she can't control, so Rose waits until the zombies begin to pile at the door before she says a prayer and turns them to swiss cheese.

It is the loneliest night of her life, worse than all her nights alone in military college, even worse than the night she found out about Papa. She hears Elesis snoring lightly, hears her cry out to the dead in her sleep, and _every single goddamned time_ she wants to walk over and kiss Elesis back to restful sleep, and _every single goddamned time_ she forces herself to focus on the walkers mewling at the windows.

(It's not over quickly.)

Dawn breaks in a sunshower, seeing as it somehow rained all through the night. Rose waits at the windows for the rain to stop, hoping that her friends aren't stupid enough to walk out into the cold to find her and Elesis, and when light fills the sky and nips at the rotting bodies of the zombies outside, she finally dares to look back at Elesis where she's waking up.

"Rose," Elesis says, voice muffled in a yawn. "Are you okay?"

And as all her muscles turn to wood in an instant, Rose can't even find the strength to nod.

Slowly, the rain trickles to a stop, and by the time the sun bares its face again in the sky, Elesis has managed to half-crawl, half-stumble over to Rose's spot by the window. "Thank you," she says quietly. "That's two I owe you now, for the elevator and now."

" _ELESIS? ELESIS! ROSE! WHERE ARE YOU?"_

There's a flash of black and blue, and then Lu and Ciel and Ara are rounding the corner, running towards the stupid strip mall with blinding speed. "They're here," Elesis says reverently, before she breaks into a huge grin. "GUYS! WE'RE IN THE PIZZA SHOP!"

Rose hears none of it. The assault rifle slips from her grasp before she can register it, clattering to the tiled floor of the stupid pizza joint, and with it slips her consciousness, as she fights to swim out of the darkness and the rain and into the bright new day, but the night still has its grip on her and she can still feel the tug of a zombie hand against her hood pulling her deeper into oblivion—

"Rose? _ROSE!_ "

* * *

 **A/N: nothing a bit of sleep can't fix, hopefully**

 **i'm very sorry for the late chapter again. between packing for university and getting used to typing with my new laptop, writing has been slow.** **i'm gonna be headed to university next monday. i'm trying very hard to have another chapter prepared before then, but if i disappear off the face of the planet for a few weeks... well, you know where i've gone**

 **in other news i've sorely missed writing action lately, because all of my other writing has been either fluff or introspection. this was a whole lotta fun to write, especially the scene where they (gasp) hold hands**

 **special thanks to my friends Roy, Elaine and Will for giving me advice on guns and how they work. in spite of all my love for this au, my area of expertise still remains in medieval weaponry, and i'm not about to give Elesis a historically accurate cutlass to be lopping off zombie heads with**

 **~Marg**


	49. Hollow of Lethe (III)

Something shuffles when Ain wakes up, hunched over his notes at the table. Sunlight glitters through the windows, and he blinks away the last bleary moments of a night that lasted way too long.

Ciel's jacket falls off his shoulders, and he freezes.

Between trying to stop Ara's panic attacks and his own, Ain doesn't coherently remember the night in a linear fashion. He remembers watching Elesis run out into the rain, powerless to stop her as Lu wailed in pain. He remembers Ara being much too quiet, and pushing Add away when he tried to approach. He remembers pacing the house until his feet got sore.

He remembers Ciel being there through it all, like a pillar of strength. A simple touch to his shoulder was enough to stop him from slamming his head against the wall in sheer _frustration,_ the struggle of being useless. Something in that simple moment of contact echoes into the morning sun with alarming clarity.

And as Ain picks Ciel's jacket off the ground, he thinks that those echoes are getting much too loud to be ignored.

The navy fabric feels all at once familiar and stranger under his fingertips, like an itch that won't go away. Ain holds it to his chest, and pretends that it isn't so painful to think about a future with someone he speaks to on such familiar terms.

A door creaks, and Ain jumps a foot into the air before relaxing when he sees who it is. Add has half a bottle of water and a thin grimace as he looks Ain up and down, notices him clutching the jacket, and sighs. "You finally woke up."

"What time is it?"

Add sits down on the other side of the table. "About ten?" he says. "Ara took Lu and Ciel and left about half an hour ago, so it should be about ten." His expression noticeably sours when Ain flinches at Ciel's name. "He wanted to take his jacket back, but he said you were asleep, so he ended up taking mine instead." It's only then that Ain notices the threadbare, faded parka that Add usually wears under his newer one. "If they don't get back within the next half hour, I'm going onto the roof."

"Wait." Ain grips tighter onto the jacket, looks for words and finds none, and sits down. "I need some advice."

Add stares at him for a solid three seconds and sighs, setting his water bottle down. "This is about Ciel, isn't it."

"Am I really that transparent?"

"At least you picked one that's available," Add mutters. "He cares for you a lot, doesn't he."

And that's the hard truth: Ciel cares for him, possibly more than anyone else on this team. Lu couldn't give two shits about anyone except for herself and her brother; Add only has eyes for Ara; Rose only has eyes for Elesis; Ara gives her affections freely with the taste of bittersweet honey; Elesis hides behind a wall of caring for otherwise. Ciel is the only one who makes him feel _important,_ feel as a luxury rather than a necessity.

It's like the sirens are blaring over him again, and he's in the back of the ambulance with a blanket in hand, except instead of telling the patient they're going to be alright he _is_ the patient, and he's drowning in a sea of pain and euphoria and something else that smells of rubbing alcohol.

(If this is a nightmare, please, please, _please_ let him wake up now—)

"You like him," Add finally says, and Ain flinches. "I'll say it again. You like him. Is it _that_ hard to stomach?"

"Please stop repeating it," Ain pleads, looking around as if Ciel will miraculously appear out of thin air. "Yes, it _is_ that hard to stomach!"

Because Ain's not sure if he's ever really _liked_ anyone before. The first thing in his life was always his duty to the people of Elrios; second was his duty to his faith. Knowing that he never really had a father in his life because of his mother's failed marriage—he's not sure he _wants_ to risk that kind of heartbreak if and when someone leaves him.

But Ciel makes him so, _so_ happy, more than any of his other friends. He remembers Sasha from college, who had a laugh like a water harmonica and routinely fell asleep on his couch. He remembers Theodore, who released a flock of doves from his balcony one Sunday evening with no reason other than "why not". He remembers waking up in a shelter with Elesis's little wolf pack, wondering how he got so lucky to stumble across such kind people.

 _You're faking it,_ part of him whispers. _You're a religious man, a paramedic and an agent of ELIA. You don't have time to be falling in love, and you really don't have the circumstances, not when the world is ending at your doorstep._

(But he is.)

"What is it like," he says, "being in love with Ara?"

Add doesn't even flinch. "Wonderful," he says in a complete deadpan. "She's like the honey in lemonade, and she has a smile like sun peeking through stormclouds, and she has a significant other that is not me."

At that exact moment, the front door rattles, and both of them leap to their feet. " _A little help out here!"_ Lu shrieks, kicking the door repeatedly.

Ain rushes to open the door, and in comes a mess of various people and weapons. Lu and Ciel are carrying an unconscious Rose between them, while Ara and a limping Elesis trail behind. "Elesis twisted her knee," Lu supplies, which still explains nothing as to why Rose is passed out and has now been deposited on the (probably unstable!) table. "I'll go help her in."

"Me too," Add says hurriedly, glancing over at Ciel. "Uh, mind returning my parka?"

In absolute stony silence, Ciel shucks off the violent violet jacket and hands it back to him. Add nods, promptly throws it over his shoulders and runs off after Lu. This, naturally, leaves Ain paralyzed as Ciel drops into a chair, takes off his face mask and starts to catch his breath.

"What happened to Rose?" Ain finally manages. "Did she pass out before or after you got there?"

"After." Ciel leans back in the chair for a moment, closes his eyes and relaxes. "Elesis injured herself soon after they got to a shelter for the night. Rose stayed up shooting zombies at the window. It's just exhaustion, nothing she can't sleep off."

"Right."

It feels strange seeing Rose curled up on the table in front of them, like she's some sort of intruder to this sacrosanct conversation despite being unconscious. Nonetheless, Ain feels out of place. "Do you want some water?" he asks Ciel. "I can open some of the dried fruit if you want food."

Ciel just shakes his head. "Can I… can I have my jacket back, please?"

Somehow, the jacket is still clutched tightly in Ain's hands. With the steadily shaking hand of a former paramedic, he holds it out, helps Ciel slip into the sleeves and watches his broad shoulders fill out the fabric.

"Thank you," Ciel says, offering one of his rare smiles, "Ain."

"No problem," Ain replies, ignoring the way something grows tight in his chest.

And that, he knows, is trouble.

* * *

 **A/N: so uh university happened and i didn't expect to be thrown off this badly**

 **i'm really sorry for the three week disappearance, but things should be back on track! i have a lot of free time nowadays, though that's going to change soon by the looks of it. nonetheless, i'll do my darndest to keep up at least an update every week.**

 **also i'm taking a really cool storytelling course, and it's probably going to have at least a 20% impact on my writing by the end of the year, so stay tuned!**

 **~Marg**


	50. Hollow of Lethe (IV)

It doesn't feel like it'll ever stop raining.

Ara turns off the burner and pours the boiled water into a travel mug with a broken handle. The quiet wash of the water is drowned in the hammering of the rain against the windowpane where she takes her seat. The house is much too quiet and loud all at once.

There's a lot on her mind, after all.

It comes down in sheets, like angry satin crashing down and shattering like glass upon cold, cold bodies. Some of the nearby houses are probably starting to flood; one extremely battered building collapsed in the night, taking down a handful of crawlers and biters with it, but it's no less dangerous out there.

It's been a day since they hauled Elesis and Rose out of that pizza parlour, and the rest of them have been on strict watch cycles around the house. Rose didn't wake up for fourteen hours after they brought her back to the shelter, and when she eventually did, it was with screaming and an incoherent nightmare that Ara didn't have the courage to decipher. Elesis has been more lucid, but with her knee still in a splint, the most she can do is camp by a window and yell for help if something approaches.

She's sleeping now, tucked into the couch with her arms crossed over her chest and her hood over her head. Dynamo is napping on her stomach, so peacefully that Ara can almost forget the cat's distress when she was at her worst. Maybe it's warmer there, close to Elesis's heart.

Everyone has been shaken by the whole debacle. Rose won't look her in the eye, and after her little _don't touch me_ tantrum the other night, neither will Add. Lu has gone quiet, too quiet, and Ara just _knows_ that the younger girl is blaming herself for everything that's happened.

And Elesis… just doesn't talk. Ara helps her up when she insists on taking her watch shifts, and although Ara will always offer words of encouragement and healing, Elesis never answers, just smiles and pretends to lean into Ara's touch and pretends that things are okay as they used to be.

This is Ara's bane, her Achilles' heel, her Kryptonite. She hates the silence, hates the lack of touch, hates that things are so unfamiliar and so alien in this terrible environment. She longs for conversation, and even that simple, _human_ thing she cannot have, not when Lu has a furrow in her brow and Ain always looks like he's about to cry and Ciel has been pretending that he doesn't need to sleep.

The door creaks, and Ara's hand goes instinctively to her side, except her assault rifle isn't even at her side, it's propped up against the wall, and it's just Rose stepping in from the pantry where she'd been barricading the door and windows.

"I boiled some water," Ara says helpfully. "There's still some in the pot if you want some tea."

Rose nods blankly and shuffles into the decrepit kitchen to find herself a mug. Despite the vacant look in her eyes, there are faded tear streaks across her cheekbones, smudged from sleep. She looks so small, so tired, so _torn._

And Ara doesn't mean to be cruel, but Elesis is still asleep on the couch with her leg propped up and Rose is looking blindly for a drop of water and Add is very obviously trying to turn his attention back to his notes, and there is a lot on Ara's mind and she can't ignore it any longer.

"You love her, don't you," she says, and Rose freezes. "Elesis, I mean."

The Empyrean girl has always been quiet, but now that the truth is ringing between them, even the rain seems to be too loud in comparison. "You know," she whispers, and that alone confirms every single theory Ara's had since she found Rose and Elesis struggling to breathe at the mouth of that elevator in Altera. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be." Ara tries to offer her a smile, finds she can't muster one, and puts a hand on Rose's shoulder instead. "I of all people would know how easy it is to fall for her."

Rose inhales sharply, nods once, and downs the water in her mug. "Thank you," she says hoarsely, before she flees back into the pantry, presumably to avoid Ara's gaze for the foreseeable future.

And in the end, Ara can't blame her. Because Ara Haan is not perfect. Because Ara Haan has one massive weakness, and it is that she falls hard and cannot get back up. Because Ara Haan looks at Elesis Sieghart, and still sees the world in her, even though Add Grenore shines just as brightly in her peripherals.

She knows Elesis is, to a degree, playing along and pretending things are okay between them, but Elesis is selfish in that she pretends to be things that she isn't so that people won't distance themselves from her, and Ara has known her for long enough to tell her lies for her, but not long enough to tell them _to_ her. On the other hand, Add wears his heart on his sleeve and tries to cover it up by being snappish and cold, but Ara is the only one who has been able to warm him up, she'd be lying if she said that she's not proud of being the only one able to do so, and at the end of the day, she's just as guilty of being selfish and wanting Add to herself and wanting _so badly_ for him to lean on her.

Ara Haan is not perfect. Ara Haan is indecisive, and she looks at Elesis sleeping on the couch and Rose staring at the boards over the pantry window and Add glaring at his own father's handwriting in the kitchen, and she doesn't know what to think.

There's always that looming problem of _what if_ looming overhead, the inevitable feeling of regret that she hates so much. Down her path, there are too many futures, too many ways that everything could go wrong in a heartbeat.

(Ara Haan is scared. So very, very scared.)

* * *

 **A/N: i defeated the monster that is bio homework for this**

 **i wrote a lot of this on my lunch breaks at work while i was listening to sad music, which is to say i'm very sorry for the run-on sentences. i'm going to try and rein them in from now on.**

 **actual plot stuff will happen soon i swear**

 **~Marg**


	51. Hollow of Lethe (V)

It takes a week for the rain to stop, and for the entirety of the week, Lu suffers indoors, unable to stretch her legs or jump around or even just take a walk around the house. Their food supply shows no signs of depletion for the time being, but she checks it three times a day, sometimes more, just in the odd event that she should need to go out and make a food run.

She's bored. So, _so_ bored.

"Can't I do something other than stare out the window?" she asks one day when her schedule collides with Elesis, and they find themselves staring at the rain outside once again. "Like, I dunno, check the basement! Maybe there's bottled water or something."

"That's not safe," Elesis says, but her eyes and her thoughts are clearly far away. She's been like that lately, and Lu doesn't blame her. "Remember when you found the lumps?"

But now the rain has finally stopped, and as Lu steps into a damp and rather miserable morning, she can't help but feel underwhelmed by the weather. The world is still save for the quiet mumble of trickling water across cracked pavement, and when she gingerly tests an errant foot into the street, it comes back soaked to her socks.

In a word, disappointing. The worst kind of autumn.

That can't stop her, though. She adjusts the straps on her backpack for the nth time, digs around in a pocket for a bit of jerky to feed to Dynamo, and watches as the others emerge from the house, dazed and confused.

"Are we headed downtown?" she asks as Elesis steps out. Their once-so fearless leader now walks warily around puddles, and leans on a makeshift cane for support. "I think the notes from Altera said that Henir's headquarters were deep into the city."

"That's true," Elesis says. "I'll admit, I don't have the area charted out, but we do have a map, it shouldn't be too bad?"

It's a distracted answer. Elesis is distracted. They all are, and it's starting to distress Lu a little. Add and Ara won't talk to each other, and Elesis barely says anything to anyone. Rose shuffles awkwardly at the back of their group, clutching her pistols tightly like they'll do all the speaking for her; Lu wishes she could tell her how brave she is.

And of course there is something _fishy_ going on with Ain and Ciel. Lu has never really trusted Ain (no one, not even her, can smile like that in a time like this) since he joined their group, but in the past few months, she's started to see the human side to him. He gets scared. He puts on a mask of a smile, just like the rest of them do. He talks to Ciel because Ciel is a beacon of silent wisdom, which Ain apparently needs.

Lu is an observer, a watcher, a scout. She's been like that her whole life, learning to interpret her parents and their moods. A twitch of the eyebrows could mean displeasure or downright anger; she'd have to check their hands and lips to be sure. It was how she knew exactly what her teachers liked to see in her work, how she knew the principal wasn't really sorry when she brought down the expulsion stamp like a gavel, how she knew exactly who had ratted her out when she left.

Now, as she studies Ain, she's got a lot to work with. There has always been a sense of frailty to Ain, but now he looks like he could get snapped in half at any moment. The wild nervous energy that makes him wring out his wrists and kick himself in the calves is concerning. He's become a glass sculpture, threatening to shatter in on himself.

And that makes Lu worried. She doesn't want to admit it, but Ain is a friend as much as he is an ally. He and Ciel stood by her as she brought down the Behemoth, and she trusted him enough to tell him about her years of cheerleading. There's got to be something she can do for him.

"Come on," she says, grabbing him by the sleeve before he can plonk himself down in a seat in their shelter for the night, "we don't have time to sit down and dally around."

"Lu, what—"

"You need to stop moping," she snaps, even though moping isn't even remotely close to what he's been up to. "I said I would teach you some karate, and I am."

Granted, it's been many years since she last did any karate herself. She stopped when she was twelve, after the third time she passed out in class out of sheer exhaustion. Piano keys and landing protocol and punchbags blur together in her mind's eye, but she forces herself to sharpen, sharpen away the fuzzy edges until all she's left with is solid.

Ain watches hesitantly as she drags a disintegrating cushion off a couch and props it up on a table. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

"Of course," she snaps, and recoils when she sees him wince. "I haven't gotten to stretch my arms and legs in so long." She puts her hands on her hips. "Drop your bags, you won't need them."

Warily, Ain lets his things slide from his shoulders onto the floor below. "That's right," Lu says. "Now, the first part of learning karate."

"It's stance, isn't it."

"Nope!" She reaches up and bops him on the nose. "It's respect, dummy. Respect your peers, respect your opponent, respect the environment, and most importantly—" She stands up straight, feet together and hands at her sides. "Respect _yourself._ That's the biggest thing."

She pokes him in the chest for emphasis. "Respect yourself. That means you're allowed to put yourself before others, and it means you're allowed to show emotions aside from _I love all my friends and I have to make sure all of them are okay._ "

Ain looks surprised for a good second before laughing out loud. "I feel as though you have greatly misjudged what an emotion is."

"Oh, you know what I mean." Lu turns to the impromptu punching bag, adopts a fighting stance, and gives a yell from the bottom of her stomach as she plunges her fist into the moldy fabric. When she pulls her arm away, there's a dent into the cushion. "I used to do that whenever I got stressed—just locked myself in my basement, put a punching bag on the wall and beat it up."

"Huh." Ain smiles. "I used to do that, but with whack-a-mole. There was an arcade near the hospital I reported to. It was one of my few enjoyments in life."

Lu steps aside, and he takes a swing at the cushion. It doesn't nearly leave as much of a dent as hers, and frankly, his yell is weak, but it's something. She can work with that. "Your stance is awful," she gripes, as she performs the correct one next to him. "Here. Like this. Put more _confidence_ into it."

From the doorway, Ciel smiles under his face mask, and slips away.

* * *

 **A/N: wow it's been 3000 years**

 **so i got slammed with a brick of uni to the face again, and next monday is november, which means nanowrimo. i'll do my best to have something up**

 **i need the Good Friendship Kush so here we are. also i did in fact take karate when i was younger! respect is a huge part of the discipline, and i honestly really recommend taking it up. you really get to know your own limits and challenge them, and it encourages you to try new things outside your comfort zone!**

 **~Marg**


	52. Hollow of Lethe (VI)

"You know," Rose says, "I have the strangest feeling that this is a bad idea."

She's kneeling on the ground in the apartment building, gun at the ready as she glances around the hallway. Lu is still picking the lock with a paperclip and a bobby pin, both rusted and battered by the elements. "It's too late to turn back," the younger girl insists, with only half a waver in her voice. "Hang tight. I'll figure it out."

A rustle comes from down the hallway, and Rose whirls her gun around to face it. It's not a zombie, thankfully, but just the walls settling. That's not much better, not when the yellowed wallpaper started to fade into green moss the closer they got to Henir's apartment. Rips and tears like claws in the wallpaper show the virus has settled into the crumbling drywall, too.

In all honesty, Rose and Lu should be dead.

But here they are, trying to get into Henir's lab. Despite the fragile state of their team, Elesis gave them the go-ahead with the reconnaissance mission anyways, and Rose would be lying if she said she didn't resent her a little for it. _We're on the verge of falling apart,_ she thinks mournfully, _and she's still trying to be the hero._

So then they argued, all seven of them, for hours over who gets to head into the fray. Elesis herself wanted to make the trip, and was immediately shot down by Ara and Ain both. Lu volunteered because she's the lightest and the fastest and has gotten the most cumulative sleep lately, and Rose offered to come with her in a bit of an awkward reconciliation over the convenience store disaster that they've both sort of accepted. It's not like they had a lot to talk about while getting to the apartment complex.

But actions speak louder than words, and Rose hears the forgiveness in Lu's vulnerability. She's got all her attention trained on the door lock, her furrowed brow and pouty lips trapped in a cute childhood innocence. She's trusting Rose to watch her back, and Rose isn't about to let her down when this building is literally ground zero.

Her medical mask crinkles with each slow breath she dares to take. The seconds tick away erratically, a far cry from the hours she spent staring into oblivion that night in the pizza joint.

 _This is for humanity,_ she tells herself. _We're doing this to save everyone. Once it's over, I can go home._

And yet, home isn't her tidy suburban house in Empyrean anymore. It stopped being that tidy suburban house when she left, when Papa died and she decided to stop being that little girl. Home is with this ragtag bunch now, this little family that took her in when she was on the verge of shattering. Home is complaining about dead electronics with Add, and talking about food from Before with Lu and Ciel, and trying on newfound clothes with Ara to see who can wear them, and correcting Ain's broken Empyrean. Home is at Elesis's side, watching her swing that baseball bat in a shining arc and matching it with a spray of bullets.

She wonders if anyone else feels that way.

Lu swears under her breath, and the door clicks and shrieks as it's forced open. A wave of some inhuman stench floods out, and for a moment in the world of festering flesh and crumbling walls Rose nearly loses her balance. "We're good," Lu announces to the not-quite empty hallway, and Rose sighs and gets to her feet shakily. "Let's go."

The first thing Rose notices is the clock on the wall. In life, it might have been beautiful, a cuckoo clock with a trellis of roses and a moon upon its pendulum among dangling stars. Now, in its death, it is a ghost of its master craftsmanship, blanketed in viral moss and festering, _bubbling_ with life.

This wasn't always a lab.

It was, once upon a time, a home.

"We can't stay here," Rose murmurs, and Lu doesn't quite respond. "Let's try to find something useful and dip as quickly as we can."

Her lungs burn as she dares to take another shallow breath and inhales the pungent scent of science gone wrong. It was cruel, cruel of them to come here in the first place, to think that they could last longer than this virus. She turns over a spatula on a green-veined table and finds virus seeping into the rotten silicone, eating away at the wood inside the handle. It falls to pieces in her fingers, and she lets it drop to the floor soundlessly.

Rose hates it in here. She's supposed to not be afraid of death, but here she is, not quite cowed by what transpired three years ago but practically frozen in the face of what has grown since. Try as Ain might to convince her that viruses aren't technically living things, the world of the undead still terrifies her horribly.

This isn't right. No one should be capable of making something so _awful,_ and yet Henir apparently has, apparently _did._ Giant glass pipes run the height of the kitchen; Rose uses the fragments of the spatula to scrape off the layer of moss growing on one, and nearly throws up as a human eyeball floats suspended in the murky liquid inside.

"That one's was a kitchen," Lu says, coming out of a nearby room. Seems right; Rose can make out the shape of a stove buried under a mountain of moss. "There's a bathroom over there, you can tell because the bathtub is full of chunks." She swallows. "Rose, I… I'm scared. There's far too many rooms in this apartment for a single man."

Something clicks in a moment. "The files that we found in Altera," Rose recalls, "they said that Henir was divorced. Do you think…"

"He lived here with his partner and child? Absolutely." Lu grimaces. "I think I've got something of a layout memorized. We should go as soon as we can."

Rose stares into the hallway leading to the other rooms. It doesn't seem right that it ends in a wall, a dead end, not when this was once a fairly affluent neighbourhood. "Lu, how many of the rooms seem to be bedrooms so far?"

"Uh, one." The younger girl points to the door in question. "Don't bother going in. There's also another bathroom, actually, but…"

They approach the second bathroom together, Lu clinging warily to Rose's shoulder. The door barely moves, and it's dark as all hell, but when Rose swings her flashlight into the dark, something not quite liquid gurgles from in the bathtub and splashes over the edges like some witch's brew come to life. Lu whimpers, and in that moment Rose reaches out with lighting-fast reflexes and slams the door shut.

And then there's the matter of the end of the hallway. The wall is covered in moss, but if Rose squints, she can just make out the shape of a door handle, hinges on the other side. "Stay back," she tells Lu, who obliges happily and retreats a safe distance away.

Every inch of her is burning. The world around her is so horribly not-dead, so horribly _alive_ that the walls feel like they're breathing. Rose is terrified of this world and _furious_ that someone made it this way, that she has to live through it now in fear just to see another day—

Her boot goes right through the rotting wood of the door, and as she pulls it back through the hole she's accidentally made, the entire door falls off the hinges and collapses to the ground.

And then it gets worse.

"This room is completely untouched by the virus," she gasps, as Lu rejoins her hesitantly. "Wha— where is this?"

"Henir had a child," Rose says, and thinks she'll be sick to her stomach. "There are two bedrooms. It's the only possibility I can think of."

It is so horribly empty, and in the too-silent void of the empty room flooded with sunlight Rose feels like the world is going to tip over and bring her down with it. A too-small bed, with sheets still carefully laid out in now-faded patterns of dinosaurs. A crumbling corkboard with a child's earnest crayon drawings, colours fleeting in the sun. A framed photo, browned in the cruel sun, of a woman's laughing face and the soft smile of a young boy.

If this apartment is ground zero, then this room must be the eye of the storm, a terribly untouched oasis in the living nightmare. Lu looks at Rose with such a pained expression, and Rose nods, and they run, away from the walls that pulse like heart muscle and drown their lungs in virus where they stand. Rose doesn't dare breathe until they've made it far out of the room, the hallway, the building, the entire accursed neighbourhood.

Lu scrubs her hands until her gloves fall off, and tears the medical mask off her face. She's crying. "I want to go home, Rose," she whimpers, and every bone in Rose's body aches but she still gathers the younger girl into her arms and holds her tight, grateful to be even alive. "I just want to go home."

Rose agrees with her. She really does.

But after seeing what home was to Henir, she's not really sure she knows what kind of home she wants to return to.

* * *

 **A/N: *laughs nervously* happy 2020**

 **so i've been dead for like a whole month, and i'm just wondering in deep confusion how i ever overcame nanowrimo burnout in the past. i uh did in fact win nanowrimo 2019 (i'll be putting it on ao3 instead of here for formatting reasons) and then i got slammed with finals. uni's been weird but i'm getting along. also the winter break was weird and i spent most of it asleep**

 **but yeah it be 2020! i'm gonna try and finish WtWE this year, because i don't want to lose steam on it before i finish it. also as you can probably tell my entire posting schedule has been thrown off, but i'll try to keep things on track from now on! please hold me to it. send me angry reviews if i disappear again**

 **let's make 2020 the year of good writing**

 **~Marg**


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